


the only way to be sure

by JustBeforeTheDawn



Category: Alien Series, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Betty Cooper Deserves Better, Betty Cooper Needs a Hug, Character Death, Dubious Science, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Horror, Hurt FP Jones II, Hurt Jughead Jones, M/M, Manipulation, Past Character Death, Protective Jughead Jones, Slow Burn, Veronica Lodge is a Good Friend, discussion of dark betty but actually fuck that plotline on the show, fuck that plotline here to be honest, if you've seen the film you know people are gonna die, some of them will be people you like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:41:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 58,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23327188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustBeforeTheDawn/pseuds/JustBeforeTheDawn
Summary: Betty Cooper awakens fifty-seven years after a monster destroyed her family.  She thinks that her nightmare is over.When news comes that the same monsters threaten a new world, she knows she has to return.  With the help of a rag-tag bunch of Marines nicknamed the Serpents, Lodge-Grande Corporation's most competent heiress and the full support of Earth's government, surely this time it will be easier?No.  No, it won't.
Relationships: Alice Cooper/Hal Cooper, Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz, Chic/Original Charles Smith (Riverdale), Jason Blossom/Polly Cooper
Comments: 139
Kudos: 58





	1. Registering on Scopes

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Cowboy Jones: Dark Matter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16729515) by [AdamantEve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdamantEve/pseuds/AdamantEve). 



> Okay so we're all stuck inside now but i'm also on my fourth week of bedrest from a foot operation and I decided to watch Riverdale right after watching Alien and Aliens and apparently my brain was like 'you've never written a fanfiction before, ever, but what if Riverdale happened with space monsters and Betty was Ripley and Jughead was Hicks?'. also I read the Cowboy Jones series by Adamant Eve which very loosely inspired Corporal Jughead Jones, the one nice space marine. honestly it's a very silly idea but I made a list comparing characters and it felt like it worked really, REALLY well. anyway that's why this implausible thing occurred. please be nice to me if you think it sucks.
> 
> i completely should have mentioned: thank you to @Smudge for all the encouragement on Tumblr!

The _Riverdale_ ’s sirens blare in Betty’s ears, remorseless and unrelenting, but the sound of Polly’s screams are still deafening inside her head. With a barely controlled flamethrower swinging in front of her, she staggers through the corridors, heart bursting from her chest.

_Don’t think about chests bursting, don’t think about Jason...Don’t think about Mom, Polly, Charles, Chic..._

_Don’t think about Dad._

The ship lurches as it continues to self-destruct. Betty can’t believe how slowly she seems to be moving, each step taking twice the time it needs to. Overhead, ETHL’S emotionless voice continues her amiable countdown, informing Betty uselessly that the option to override self-destruct has now expired.

_That psycho bitch._

Sweat pools at the base of Betty’s neck and the strands of hair that have escaped from her ponytail cling to her face unheeded. If the thing – the creature – is still there, Betty has no idea what she is going to do. There is only one way on board the shuttle – the _Register_ , the little shuttle that Mom had named after the newspaper in her old town back on Earth, just as she’d named the main ship after the town itself – and Betty already dropped Caramel in her case there as soon as she saw the alien. The thought of having left the little golden cat to the alien strikes her, with that strange calm that terror can bring, as the same kind of cruelty that Lodge-Grande Corp have inflicted on her and her family – Caramel cannot possibly understand what is happening, why she has been brought and left here, and why she is going to die at the hands (hands? Does it have hands? It looked like a man, _Jason’s son_ ) of a creature that she can’t even grasp the idea of. Betty abandoned Caramel to shut down self-destruct, and save her own life, and she’s failed at that too. Betty ran in fear, and left Caramel to die, and the creature will kill her as soon as she tries to access the shuttle.

Caramel is not dead. The creature is not there. There is just an empty hallway, and the gleaming white airlock.

Caramel mews pathetically inside the carrying case.

“Caramel,” Betty breathes. She scoops her cat up, swings the flamethrower to check the corridor one last, pointless time, and staggers the last few steps into the _Register_. The cat screeches as Betty drops the case, but her hands are scrabbling over the controls for the airlock. Bursts of flame from the burning _Riverdale_ follow her through as Betty closes the blast doors and hurls herself and Caramel into the main body of the shuttle. Her own panicked breathing is nearly loud enough to drown out ETHL’s placid countdown of _T-minus one minute_ as she activates the shuttle’s controls, hoping against hope that that one minute will be enough time for the _Register_ to clear the _Riverdale_ ’s blast radius. Her ponytail has disintegrated completely and tendrils of blond hair are sticking to her sweaty face, her chest, her fingers, and tangling in the pilot seat’s restraints as she straps herself in.

_T-minus thirty seconds._ ETHL was designed to be a calming voice, to sound like a maternal and reasonable authority figure to crews out on deep space routes who might be out of contact with human authorities for months at a time. Betty, who had her own unreasonable maternal authority figure out in deep space with her, has never minded ETHL until this moment. Alice had protested, of course, but ETHL was installed as standard computer AI on all Lodge-Grande Corp ships.

Just now, Betty finds that ETHL’s calm voice counting down is making her feel sick, the nausea building in opposition to the disappearing seconds. The _Register_ is powering up, but there are only twenty-six seconds left of the _Riverdale’s_ life when the shuttle is hurled into movement. Betty closes her eyes as the ship rockets into movement, nails curled into the palms of her hands, reopening wounds that have barely had a chance to close in the hours since Jason, Alice and Polly stepped foot on LV-426. The blood mingles with the sweat on her skin, but Betty barely notices against the velocity of flight, and the pain rising inside her heart that she has not yet begun to feel in her desperation to survive.

There are little more than ten seconds left when the _Register_ clears the _Riverdale,_ the bigger ship disappearing rapidly – _not rapidly enough, please, please_ – into a speck among the stars. Betty opens her eyes and stares at the ship that holds her mother’s body somewhere inside, her siblings’, her father’s, for the last ten seconds, before the light from the blast forces her to stop. She once heard somewhere that in space, no-one can hear you scream – _Mom just went silent, but Polly screamed, Charles tried to save her but he screamed and then Polly screamed and screamed_ – but she thinks whoever said that is wrong. The blast from the _Riverdale’_ s destruction batters the lonely shuttle and it is the loudest sound Betty has ever heard. It blasts, again and again, so loud that Betty’s ears ache and the light comes through her eyelids and the ship shakes so much she thinks _this is it, I should have died on the ship when he tried to – when Dad tried to – I should have died with my family because now I’ll just die on my own a little later._

She thinks the third blast is big enough, surely, to end her, maybe even big enough to end this corner of the universe, but slowly, slowly, the light fades, and all that is left is an afterglow like the worst migraine Betty’s ever had, burning gently in the stars and on Betty’s retinas. She lies there for a minute, breathing heavily, before she frees herself from the restraints and vomits into the refuse chute.

She takes another minute to curl up around her knees before she gets up to rescue Caramel from the carrying case. She is alive; Caramel is alive. If she takes another minute to think longer than that, if she stops and thinks about everything that has happened, she knows she will not make it to the cryo-tube and _that would be a waste, wouldn’t it, Elizabeth_?

Alice will never call her Elizabeth again, will never blend the lines between Captain Smith and Mom in ways that always made Betty’s head and heart ache. Chic and Charles will not tease her as she busies herself with maintenance in the bowels of the Riverdale. Jason will not... well, she never really knew Jason that well, he was new and he was Polly’s sort-of boyfriend and at this moment she wishes she had known he was insatiably curious so she could throttle him before he decided to play chicken with unidentified fucking alien lifeforms. Polly will not share secrets with her, will not help make her feel human after they come out of hibernation.

She will not think about her dad.

She cuddles Caramel, who is clinging to her like a furry limpet, and chats to her cat, who, being a cat and therefore unable to comprehend the enormity of the journey ahead of them, meows back conversationally. She tidies the ship. She does not know what anyone will make of her story when she gets home, and it is one of the things she is not thinking about.

Behind her, a coil of machinery uncurls its head, and reaches a clawed hand out into the warmth of the cabin. She does not see it yet.

* * *

Some fifty-seven years later, although Betty and Caramel were hardly counting, a salvage ship was performing routine scans in a little-inhabited area of the core systems. These ships were not an uncommon site in such areas; archaic space technology was often to be found floating far away from its original orbit or flight path. One such ship had found one of the original Voyager probes some years ago, and the fame from that case, as well as the financial rewards for more mundane finds, had made salvage a booming industry. This ship, the _Piltdown,_ was owned by a private individual whose interest lay in using his fortune to gain his own fame in the business of satellite archaeology. Serious money was to be made from claiming salvaged ships and cargo alongside this, and the crew were an experienced group of commercial salvagers who saw no problem in being overpaid for a rich man’s lucrative vanity project.

When the salvage team approached the _Register,_ meandering through the outer core with little speed or clear trajectory, they did not know what to expect. The captain, who was an experienced salvager with numerous trips under her belt, looked at the image on her viewscreen dubiously.

“It’s a light shuttle,” she said, leaning against the back of her chair. “The design of that type of shitty little yacht has barely changed in the last couple of centuries. What’s so special about this boat, Wheeler?”

Wheeler, who had more experience in salvaging older craft, was her second-in-command. He had summoned her to the bridge as soon as he saw the _Register_ on the _Piltdown’s_ scopes, but now seemed to regret his alacrity.

“I was hoping that it might be an older model for the same reason,” he said, and sniffed dismissively. “Seen some damage; looked a bit more interesting than some of the other lost ships we’ve come across lately. On second thought it just looks like maybe late last century, early this century. Nothing special, sir, sorry for wasting your time.”  
The captain sighed, and squinted again at the shuttle, which was dwarfed by her own ship.

“It’s always worth something,” she stated, rubbing her forehead. “Might as well bring it in; the parts and cargo of those sturdy coracles are usually worth the cost of salvaging. Send Third Team; they could use the experience.”

Wheeler saluted lazily. Jobs like this were hardly worth their notice, and Third Team were only less experienced by having gone on marginally fewer ops. It would be simple to organise.

The _Register’_ s main hatch, untouched for over half a century, showed signs of intense heat.

“You ever seen that much of a burn scar on one of these shuttles, boss?” asked Murray. He was the youngest on the team, and had the least experience aboard the _Piltdown,_ although he had been on five year-long trips. The boss, who was a semi-retired salvager called Icko with the thin bones that years in space tended to cause, looked at the door measuredly.

“It’s a bit weird, kid,” replied Icko. “Normally I’d say it was just the usual scoring from intense burns during high-G manoeuvres, but you wouldn’t normally see a shuttle this size carrying out those kinds of burns. Not to say it doesn’t happen, it’s just that they get a bit unreliable after a while. And those burns look like a long thin burst, y’know? Not... all over the hull, like this.”

The cutting gear finished its work, and the main hatch thudded dully on to the floor of the _Piltdown’s_ airlock. The chill of years spent in a vacuum hit Murray, Icko and their back-up as they climbed through into the icy interior of the little shuttle.

With a sense of dread, Murray observed a cryo-tube in the centre of the shuttle. Usually, the shuttle was found empty of inhabitants, especially if they were as old as the _Register._ The cryo-tube, however, was fully intact, and iced over with former moister. Lights still flickered on the control panel, and he thought he could make out a shape within the tube.

He brushed ice from the surface of the tube. Sure enough, inside was a goddamn living person, with hibernation respiration signs and the slightest pink flush that indicated that they were still alive. A young blonde woman, younger than a lot of the people he’d ever met out in deep space. Her face was serene, and she was wrapped in the normal cryo-wrap. No, it was hardly the sheer synthfibre he was used to, but rather a once fluffy pink dressing gown, frozen into strange tufts. Was that... a cat? A cat, curled up on her lap, cradled protectively in bandaged hands. It was definitely the strangest thing he’d ever found salvaging.

Fuck, the salvage.

“Bio-readouts are all in the green,” Murray said, finding his voice. “Looks like she’s alive.”

The oxygen readings bleeped, indicating that the air inside the shuttle had become breathable. Murray and the others both pulled off their cumbersome breathing equipment.

“Well, there goes our salvage, guys,” he said, resigned. With his mask off he could see how pretty and peaceful the young woman looked in her sleep. “What the hell is sleeping beauty doing all the way out here?”

“It says here the tube’s adjusted for one... Elizabeth Cooper,” said Icko, reading the cryo-tube’s information panel. “She’s been out a while.”

“How long?” asked Murray. “Childes, go get Wheeler, will you? I think he’s gonna want to take a look at this after all.”

Childes, the third salvager, nodded and wandered off. He was usually in a world of his own anyway. Murray looked closer at the girl, and wondered again at how she had fallen into the Piltdown's path. She was lucky, he supposed; their financier was vain enough that he wanted no hint of scandal to tarnish his eventual archaeological fame, so he paid the crew of the Piltdown enough to make sure everything was done by the book. The captain would never have allowed any dodgy dealings with the shuttle in the first place; but Murray had heard stories of bodies dumped in space from ‘empty’ salvaged craft, and he was strangely glad that this innocent-looking woman had ended up found by a ship like the _Piltdown._

“These old-model cryo-tubes were built to last for much longer deep-space journeys than we have to take now,” said Icko, scrolling through the information screen. “It says here she’s seventeen.”

That was young.

“Or was,” Icko continued. “Legally, she’s... damn, this kid just broke records!”

“How old is she?”

“What’s seventeen plus fifty-seven?”

Eighty-four years after cryo-sleep, thought Murray. Older than my grandparents. Seventeen written on her face, and she’d only be seventeen in her head.

Fuck.

“Wouldn’t have been legitimate salvage anyway,” continues Icko. “The company that owned this ship leased it to her captain. Her mother, it looks like.”

“One of those weird little deep space families?”

“Yeah, you know the kind. Mostly ended up on colonies, although this one was Earth as you come. There’ll be more records somewhere. Anyway, the company that owned this ship is still around.”

“After fifty-seven years?”

“Yeah, take a wild guess which one.”

“The corp?”

“Bingo, kid,” said Icko heavily. “Those bastards will probably want the ship back, and the girl. I wonder what happened to their mothership? And her mother?”

Seventeen years old, and facing down the whole Lodge-Grande Corporation. Murray looked at her bandaged hands, gentle on her cat’s iced fur, and sighed.

“Maybe sleeping beauty should have stayed asleep.”


	2. A Quiet Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty oversleeps by a few decades, and makes a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please don't expect me to maintain a frequent update schedule; i am nothing if not inconsistent

This was supposed to be over. She blew it up, and now she is in her underwear (why is she in her UNDERWEAR?), without a flamethrower, trapped in a tiny tin can with a monster. It was supposed to be OVER. She would be angry if she could breathe think, wrapped in amongst her mother and father’s exosuits.

She was setting the last few settings for the ship to guide her back to Earth. It will be months – a few years, if she is unlucky – before she can stand on a planet again, look at a clear sky and see crowds of people.

Crowds upon crowds of people.

The alien is curled up, listless, nestling in the warm space in the ship’s machinery. It hasn’t seen her, even though she screamed when she saw its hand move. It could be asleep. She could climb slowly into the cryo-tube where Caramel is already padding about happily, set it not to wake her until she reaches Earth or some other ship finds her. With more people, it might be easier to kill it. Or it might die on the way? She doesn’t know what it did with her mother, or Chic, it just took them and disappeared. Maybe it eats humans. Maybe it will starve on the journey. Maybe she can just sleep and then it will not be her problem alone when she wakes up.

But she thinks of all those crowds of people on earth, of the screams that Polly let out while it did something to her. She thinks of her friends left on Earth or on the Lunar base, screaming like Polly, of their bodies torn and bloodied like Charles’. She thinks of the rows and rows of eggs that Alice and Polly saw while Jason reached out and touched one. Can this one lay eggs? What if it lays eggs and more of those things attach themselves to faces like the one on Jason, so he remained wordless and silent for days. There will be people and families and they will cough up blood and their bodies will tear and rip like some horrific parody of birth and she will have brought them there. It’s like a fucked up Noah’s Ark in her head.

Enough people are dead. Betty Cooper will not be responsible for the end of the world.

The creature nestles there, leaving trails of whatever its insane body chemistry produces all over the ship. Betty knows that if she survives she will scrub it furiously clean. It is sluggish and lethargic, colder in this smaller ship. A tiny tin can.

The vacuum of space is vast. Even a monster that bleeds acid and kills with barely a thought must be susceptible to space somehow. Betty is trapped with the exosuits, and Caramel is safely in the cryo-tube which is fully prepared for depressurisation. The alien is slow and did not catch her.  
 _I can blast it outside_ , Betty thinks.

She does. She cries, and she sings snatches of some old earth song to herself, and she screams when it sees her, but she shoots it out of the fucking airlock with a harpoon and when the cable keeps the fucking monster attached to her precious goddamn tin can, she blasts the engines and it falls or flies or however it works without gravity and it is gone. She does not know if it can survive in the vacuum of space for long but she defies it to find a way back on to any ship from there. Let it rot to acid or whatever happens to impossible space monsters in an infinite vacuum.

She cleans the ship. She gets into her fluffy pink dressing gown that Polly got her to feel more comfortable with cryo. She eats, for the first time since Jason died, and feeds Caramel, who curls up in her arms, somehow knowing that Betty needs comfort. Once she can bring herself to, she sits in the chair, and takes a last recording so that someone might know what happened to the _Riverdale,_ even if she doesn’t live long enough for them to find her.

“Final recording of the commercial starship _Riverdale._ Junior mechanic reporting. The other members of the crew – Jason Blossom, Polly Cooper, Charles Cooper, Chic Cooper... Hal Cooper...”

Her heart stutters over the thought of her father, pausing to hold in her fear and hatred and confusion and _love, I loved my father, why did he do it_ , before she can continue.

“...and Captain Alice Smith are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier in about six weeks. With a little luck, the network should pick me up. This is Betty Cooper, last survivor of _Riverdale,_ signing off.”

She cuddles Caramel closer. The cat rubs her face against Betty’s, purring for the first time since they woke up to answer that distress call. Betty sighs, and picks her way over to the cryo-tube, setting the controls to keep her alive indefinitely. It might be longer than those six weeks she hoped for. Listing her family reminds her, not for the first time, that soon her survival will sink in and she will have to confront what she has lost. As she slides into the tube and the lid lowers, Caramel’s paws make little pudding-kneads at her tummy. Caramel is all she has left in the world – the universe, and Betty feels lost, and terribly lonely.

* * *

Coming out of cryo felt easier than it ever had before. Betty did not feel the need to puke, and for once Polly was not trying to pull her upright and rub her shoulders. It helped that Alice was not flitting around singing ‘rise and shine’ in a chirpy voice that contrasted with her steely demeanour and determination to make Betty better than she is. Hal was not wandering around after Alice trying to calm her down, and her brother and his boyfriend were not holding a contest to see who could vomit the furthest.

“How are we today?” said a strange voice.

“Terrible,” Betty responded mildly. “Where’s Polly?”

A pair of strange eyes looked at her under a surgical cap, and the fog in Betty’s head cleared.

“Oh,” she said, her voice trembling. Polly is gone. “You’re the doctor who brought me round from cryo. Th-thank you.”

She tried to give the doctor with his great staring eyes an Alice Smith-approved smile, but her mouth wouldn’t quite make it, and she could feel her eyes beginning to water. Her family wasn’t here to annoy her with their post-cryo routine because her family didn’t exist anymore. They had been ripped apart, both literally and, oh god, physically.

“That’s much better than yesterday, Miss Cooper. You looked then as if you had seen something... truly awful. I am Dr Curdle Jr.”

“I’m pleased to meet you,” said Betty automatically, although she wasn’t pleased at all, and from the stare he gave her, she thought Dr Curdle knew that as well. “Where, uh, where am I?”

“Quiet Mercy Station,” responded Dr Curdle. “You have been under my care for a number of days, since your... mysterious arrival. Your condition has improved, although I dare not say what it improved from.”

Betty managed to give him a weak smile. She wondered, if he was the best person that Quiet Mercy Station had to meet someone coming round from what was probably a longish hibernation, what their other doctors were like. She wondered where Quiet Mercy Station was. Perhaps it was one of the newer bases on planets other than Earth and the moon, which were in early development stages when the Riverdale had last left Earth.

“There is a visitor for you, Miss Cooper,” the doctor intoned. Betty sat up straighter and attempted her best smile yet, before it was replaced with a real one.

“Caramel!” she said, reaching weakly for her lone friend. “Oh, Caramel, c’mere! Oh, Caramel, you little monster, where’ve you been?”

“Giving my mother allergies,” said Caramel’s companion, tossing a head of beautifully styled dark hair. “I don’t mind, but it’s awfully hard to get cat fur off designer clothes.”

Realising she was being rude, Betty reluctantly turned away from Caramel to survey her human visitor. She was a little older than Betty, dark-haired and elegantly made up, with severe eyebrows and distinct lipstick. Betty gazed at her dully. Her clothes were very unfamiliar; a cape with a high collar swished around her skirt, and her shoes, while keeping the woman’s heels several inches off the ground, appeared to have no visible means of support. Betty blinked, and tried to adjust her eyes.

“Oh, they’re just the very latest illusion zero-G heels,” said the woman nonchalantly, shifting to show Betty a more obvious angle. Betty nodded as if she knew what that meant, and waited for the woman to introduce herself.

“I’m Lodge. Veronica Lodge. I work for the company – well, I suppose I own un petit peu de notre petite corporation, but don’t let that fool you. Honestly, these days, I’m really trying to bring Daddy around to a much better way of conducting business.” The woman flashed Betty a grin, which Betty attempted to return. Betty wasn’t sure if the woman – Veronica – was being sincere, but then she also wasn’t sure that Veronica could speak French and the heiress was attempting it with total assurance, so perhaps Betty needed a bit longer to adjust to wakefulness before she could judge.

“I’m glad to see you feeling better, anyway, Betty. I can call you Betty, right? It says on your file that you’re known as that and honestly, Betty, I’d really like for us to be friends.”

“Oh,” said Betty, more than a little overwhelmed by the appearance of the part-owner of her mother’s employer, and by her intensity. “That’s okay.”

“Great! Well, they say that the disorientation and whatnot should pass in the next few days, and you, you had such a long hyper-sleep, it’s really very unusual, Betty, so it’s just natural effects-”

“How long?” Betty interrupted. Veronica looked surprised to be stopped in mid-flow, and then continued.

“Oh! Betty, I can’t believe no-one has discussed this with you yet, it’s outrageous and I’m not going to stand for it, I’ll find that Dr Curdle and-”

“What do you mean?” said Betty more forcefully. “How long was I out there?”

_Out there, floating in hyper-sleep, while no-one knew what happened to the Riverdale. No-one knows my family is dead, I need to tell my aunt, my cousins... We must have just disappeared! Mom would have known, she would’ve been up out of this bed demanding answers._

“Miss Lodge-”

“Veronica, please, Betty dear.”

“...Veronica,” Betty breathed in very hard. “I don’t know where I am. My entire family is dead. I’m sure your family would like to know what happened to the Riverdale. I want to see my remaining family and,” to her embarrassment, she was tearing up. “I want to go home.”

Veronica was silent, resting her chin on her hands for a moment.

“I’m not surprised you don’t recognise anything, because this wasn’t built when you left Earth. Look, Betty, some of this is going to come as a shock to you, but it really was... un tres long hyper-sleep.”

“How long?!” asked Betty again. Tears were trickling down her cheeks, and she could feel her nails pressing through the dressings on her hands. She wondered how long ago she had last done that. “Veronica, you said you wanted to be my friend. Please. Tell me.”

Veronica, to her credit, stopped vacillating and drew herself up straight. She looked Betty directly in the eye.

“Fifty-seven years.”

“What?” Betty almost laughed, thinking that Veronica was joking. It would be a cruel joke to play on a young woman who had just lost her entire family.

Veronica did not look as if she was joking.

“The _Riverdale_ was reported missing assumed lost fifty-seven years ago. Daddy had the record found, as soon as the _Register_ was reported as salvage. You must have drifted from wherever it was through the core systems, never registering on any of the tracking stations, until you ended up on a salvager’s route. You must be lucky, girl! You could have gone on floating through space and never been found-”

Fifty-seven years. It hit her like a bullet to the chest, a panic attack worse than she’d ever had. No family. No aunts, no grandparents? No cosy house in the real Riverdale that they stayed in when the _Riverdale_ had finished one of its normal, shorter runs? No mother, her father tried to kill her, no Polly, no Charles. No-one apart from her to know that they were gone or had ever lived.

Fuck, fuck. She can’t breathe.

Her chest hurts.

She can see it, clear as day, the expression on Jason’s face as he started to cough and the nightmare of that monster that had stolen his breath wasn’t over and he was coughing blood and it was getting worse and then his chest! It was like something punching from the inside out and there was blood everywhere and it was all over Polly, Polly who loved Jason, they were going to get married one day, maybe Betty would have been an aunt and she would have loved that, maybe twins, it runs in the mother’s family but Jason was a twin but now he’s dead - Jason's DEAD - it was on his face! And it took Chic and it took her mother and it killed Charles and Polly and she can hear Polly screaming and it's all too much to think about and it's all coming too fast. She can't breathe. Jason couldn't breathe. 

It’s inside her now.

Was there an egg on the ship? Did she miss it when she was cleaning? Was it inside her cryo-tube, breathing for her while she slept, planting something that was ready to wake when it knew there were other humans around, other prey?

She wonders if this is the way Jason felt, if he felt it moving inside his chest, settling there heavy and angry until it was ready to burst. She can feel Veronica and that terrifying Dr Curdle trying to grab her limbs and stop them thrashing. Her parents had tried that with Jason, even though they hated him sometimes. Her brothers, too, Chic and Charles who had always been together, until there was suddenly one, and then Charles tried to save Polly and then there was neither.

She is the only one of her family left who remembers. Caramel remembers; her beloved cat spits fear and hatred at her, knows what’s coming. Maybe Caramel will get away; maybe the alien only goes for humans. She is the only one alive out of her family and now she will be responsible for the end of her species.

“Please,” she croaks to Veronica as glasses smash and equipment goes flying. More staff come running in. “Please don’t let it. Please let me die.”

Her sternum cracks.

Betty awoke slowly, blinking against the gentle hospital lights.

“Hey,” said Veronica, dropping a fashion holo. “You gave us a scare there. I’m sorry you weren’t ready. It’s my fault for blurting it out like that.”

Betty stared at her, and at the clock. Veronica had stayed in the hospital to watch over her. How every unlikely. Maybe she was fulfilling some kind of macabre interest after seeing the eighty-four-year-old seventeen-year-old rescued from space lose it.

Maybe Veronica was more sincere than she seemed.

“What...” Betty struggled to sit up again. Veronica bustled over to straighten her pillows, which was honestly more comforting than the disconcerting Dr Curdle Jr. “What did happen?”

“When?”

“Earlier. Or whenever it was. When you told me how long I was in cryo- hyper-sleep and I kind of...”

“You had a panic attack, girl, and no-one blames you. Veronica Lodge is sadly a savvy businesswoman, not a counsellor – although I am willing to listen to you, if you’d like me to.”

“I had a panic attack.” Betty leaned back on the pillows. As surreptitiously as she could, she looked under her hospital gown. Her sternum was its normal concave self, and she could see no blood, nor feel the trace of that pain from earlier, other than the stiffness in her ribs and tightness in her lungs that she remembered from earlier panic attacks. “Did I... say anything?”

Veronica looked at her awkwardly.

“You said something about wanting to die,” she said simply. “Betty... what happened out there? After they managed to, well, you know, get you down a bit, you said something about your dad.”

Betty blinked back a fresh set of tears.

Your dad made my dad go mad, she thought.

But this was a different Lodge from the Lodge-Grande Corp that had asked so much of her father. A different time. Maybe this Lodge would be able to help her make sense of this story. Betty had no-one else to ask, anyway.

“Betty,” said Veronica again. “What happened to the rest of the crew of the _Riverdale?”_

“They’re dead,” said Betty. There was a sense of horrible catharsis in saying it to someone who was listening. “Mom, Dad, Charles, Chic, Polly, Jason... someone sent us to look for something. And we found it. And it killed them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry for making veronica this character, but not really. c'mon. we all remember season 2 veronica who spent half of it trying to convince betty and jughead that they were paranoid for noticing things that were actually happening. hiram clearly HAD to own the evil corporation so veronica HAD to be the corporate representative. it wrote itself. luckily i'm not planning any scenes between them so there isn't going to be any weird electra complex subtextual stuff to make us all cringe horrifically, just some random bad French and obvious literary references.
> 
> also betty is in her underwear in the flashback and she knows it's gratuitous to be in her underwear because canon was betty pointlessly half-naked and canon ripley was pointlessly half-naked and it's always pissed me off so ripley-betty is well aware of how stupid her current state of undress is.


	3. The Hearing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty tells her story. It does not go well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter kind of discusses the 'dark betty' stuff they do in the show. basically someone uses Betty's history of mental health problems against her in the tribunal. If people would prefer not to read this I am so sorry and feel free to skip this chapter.

“Where’s Earth?” says Polly.

Jason teases her a little, as Betty fruitlessly tries to call Antarctica Tracking Station. Alice is communing with ETHL, a privilege reserved for the captain and Hal, the science officer. Betty does not know where Charles and Chic are, but she expects they are somewhere in the _Riverdale’_ s mechanical innards.

“I found it, Betty,” says Polly. “Just short of Zeta Two Reticuli.”

When the rest of the family is assembled in the main area of the ship, Alice looks stern. Chic and Charles stroll in last, arm in arm as ever. Sometimes it makes Betty feel unbalanced, like she’s the only person in the crew who does not have a partner to keep her company through the darkness of space. Her parents have each other, Charles has Chic, and lately Polly has had Jason, to the profound disapproval of both of their parents. Betty only has Caramel for company. She does not mind, really, but she thinks, now and then, how nice it might be for someone to listen to her when Alice makes her feel like she’s not good enough or Charles and Chic get into a fight.

“What’s happening now, Mom?” says Charles. Alice scowls again. Betty might have let Alice start the briefing without prompting, taking the path of least resistance. Charles has always been forthright and unafraid of their mother.

“Well, Charles, if you’d let me speak, it looks like we’re only halfway home to Earth.” Alice’s posture is straight, but Betty thinks she detects a hint of an exasperated slump. “It seems our computer saw fit to wake us all up when we were only halfway home.”

This is met with horror from Charles and Chic, who are the only ones who missed Polly’s announcement that they hadn’t even reached the outer rim. Betty, Polly and Jason are more resigned to the computer’s decision to screw them all over. Hal is, as usual, quiet.

“...should certain conditions arise, and unfortunately for us they have, ETHL is programmed to wake us.”

“What kind of circumstances?” asks Polly, fiddling with something on the table miserably. Polly is probably the keenest to get home, Betty knows. Jason wants her to meet his parents, and they are thinking of leaving the Riverdale and moving to somewhere more pastoral, planetside.

“She has intercepted a transmission of unknown origin, and she got us up to check it out.”

“A transmission? Out here?” Betty perks up, fascinated. This explains her father’s hangdog look; the transmission will be a question for the science officer, and Hal will already have borne the brunt of Alice’s ire.

Charles and Chic grouse over how much work they will have to do to ensure that the Riverdale is in decent condition for atmospheric landing and take-off; Polly is not keen to investigate at all. Betty is fascinated by the idea of intercepting an alien transmission, and is profoundly jealous that Polly and Jason are the crewmembers chosen to investigate the beacon on the ground. What kind of a captain gets insurance so she can raise her children in space, but doesn’t get coverage for a minor to leave the ship? Betty fumes silently, covering her disappointment by throwing herself into work with Charles, preparing the _Riverdale’s_ rarely used landing gear.

“Cheer up, Betty,” says Charles. “Your turn next time, maybe.”

“Mom wants me to think about going to university next landing,” says Betty. She knows her voice sounds petulant. “I want to stay aboard and get more practical experience of shipboard maintenance before I do a theoretical degree.”

Charles responds with something far too reasonable, and Betty finds something else to do so she has an excuse to walk off in a huff.

The landing goes badly, but the _Riverdale_ is intact. Betty hears Chic exaggerate the length of time it will take to repair the damage, and rolls her eyes. She has never been fond of her brother’s boyfriend, but by now he is such a permanent fixture in her life, she cannot imagine coming down into the mess without seeing Chic drink milk directly from the carton. Betty could make the repairs in half the time, but Chic’s work is good, so she does not complain.

Some hours later, Alice, Jason and Polly don their exosuits and walk out on to the surface of the strange, poisonous planet. Betty is still jealous of Polly’s chance, so she decides to do something that no-one else has tried.

Her dad is watching his wife and daughter walk out into the storm. Betty sees him give a little wave to one of them as she sinks into her seat, and starts loading up the computer to try to translate their mysterious transmission. Hal is still gazing through the windows into the toxic winds of the new world.

“Dad.”

“Yes, honey?”

“You mind if I try running the transmission through ECIU?”

“Go ahead, Betty.” Her dad gives her an unconvincing smile. “My little scientist.” He turns back to contemplate the rock formations, rising out of the storms outside.

It is not an SOS beacon.

It is a warning.

Outside, Alice, Jason and Polly have completely disappeared into the storm.

* * *

Betty gazed into the simulated version of Fox Forest, designed to make her feel as at home in the LGC corporate building as possible. She had been there for a few days, waiting on her tribunal to discuss the events that led to the loss of the _Riverdale._ Veronica had cultivated a carefully non-committal position on Betty’s story. She was clearly struggling to believe it, although she believed that Betty had gone through some kind of horrific event and was attempting to support her through it as much as possible.

Simulation software had improved massively since Betty had last tried it. She remembered going to a simulated centre with Alice as a child, visiting only the carefully cultivated historical and educational suites while the other children dashed off to the games. This simulation was only discernible by the distinct lack of smell, the fresh air and greenery that Betty associated with the Fox Forest she remembered from home.

The simulation deactivated. A business-suited consultant Betty had met before – Evelyn, her name was Evelyn – dashed in, and settled on the bench that Betty was uncomfortably perched on.

“Hi, Betty, sorry I’m late, I’ve been running late all morning!” Evelyn chirped, with the same uncomfortably friendly demeanour that Betty remembered from her earlier meetings.

“It’s no problem,” Betty demurred. She had been waiting for an hour. “Is there any news about my family? My cousins?”

“Oh, Betty,” said Evelyn. She put a comforting hand on Betty’s arm, and Betty resisted the urge to flinch. “I’m afraid we couldn’t find any living relatives of yours. I’ve looked through every record I could find about you and your family, though. Would you like me to remind you of some of it?”

Before Betty could respond, Veronica swanned in, cape swirling behind her.

“Oh, B!” she said. “I think we should just worry about the deposition for now! I’ve read it, it’s great, you’re such a great writer, girl, you look a total smokeshow, I think if you just look like your gorgeous self and stick to your story, you’ll push over all the heavyweights in there, interstellar commerce – I had lunch with the president’s daughter once, she has the WORST taste in designer pants but she knows a good synth-food sushi bar – the feds, but they’ll be fine, Daddy has always had a good line with them-”

“None of my cousins are still alive, or had children?” interrupted Betty. Veronica grimaced, and glared at Evelyn.

“I was hoping to keep that from you until after the tribunal,” the heiress said. “There was no point in you dealing with that on top of everything else, B.”

I would rather have known, thought Betty, but she nodded painfully, trying to force an understanding expression on to her face. From Veronica’s equally pained look, Betty was failing miserably, hands curled into fists.

“C’mon, B.” Veronica glared again at Evelyn, who still had artificial sympathy plastered on her face. “It’s time to go.”

“I don’t understand,” said Betty. “We’ve been here for hours, Mr Wetherbee. I’ve tried to explain it, sir, I really have.”

“Try to look at it from our perspective, Miss Cooper,” said Wetherbee. Contrary to Veronica’s positive outlook, Betty got the impression from him that she was very much on trial, and the trial was not going well at all. She sat at the far end of the table from the tribunal head, shoulders straight, head down. She was well aware that this was far from the forthright performance that Veronica had tried to coach her through, but Wetherbee and his team had formed a brick wall of disbelief.

“Now, you freely admit to deliberately detonating the engines of, and therefore destroying, an M-class star-freighter, a rather expensive piece of equipment.”

“Forty-two million in adjusted dollars, minus payload,” one of the insurance executives interjected. “Now, the lifeboat’s recorder corroborates some elements of your account, that, for reasons unknown, the Riverdale set down on LV-426, resumed its course, and was set for self-destruct by you, for reasons unknown.”

“That’s not exactly what happened,” said Betty, a spark of defiance prompting her to look up and glare at the woman.

“Let Ms. McCoy speak, Miss Cooper,” said Wetherbee.

“It wasn’t for reasons unknown!” Betty ignored Wetherbee, curling her fists. She was grateful that Veronica had loaned her a long-sleeved blouse for her ‘interview armour’, making a thick cushion between her sore palms and her nails. “I told you the reason! It was company orders! We were sent to get this... thing, which destroyed my crew, my family! And,” she met McCoy’s gaze squarely, “your expensive ship.”

“Unacceptable, Miss Cooper, your family made a commitment to protect that ship and our analysis crew found no trace of the creature you describe.” Wetherbee pushed his glasses back on to his nose. “Ms. McCoy is still updating the exact cost of your actions.”

“Good!” Betty protested. “I’m glad you didn’t find any trace of it, because I blew it out of the airlock!”

“Are there any species like this organism on LV-426?” one of the feds – Minetta, Veronica had introduced him as Minetta – asked. Apparently Mrs Lodge was familiar with the government agent and had worked with him before.

“No.” Mrs Andrews, one of the lone sympathetic members of the tribunal, who hadn’t taken one look at Betty and decided that she was delusional, gave Betty an apologetic look. “Things look pretty bad for this part of your story, Elizabeth, I’m sorry. Anything we have found is inconclusive and inadmissible as corroborating evidence.”

Betty sighed. Veronica was trying to catch her eye, but she ignored the manicured nails trying to catch her blouse sleeve.

“Look,” said Betty. “I can see where this is going-”

“Can I offer a different perspective?” Evelyn piped up cheerily. Veronica offered her a scathing look, but the woman carried on regardless.

“Since LGC asked me to look up all of the Coopers’ personal files, I think I might be able to shed some light on the situation.” Evelyn shuffled the display screen behind Betty, and clicked. Betty froze as a large picture of Hal took up most of the screen. It was accompanied by intensive notes on his psychiatric profile.

“Since everyone who undertook a deep space mission was expected to undergo a serious psychiatric evaluation, we’ve been able to look into Betty’s story about her father’s actions with a bit more of a sense of the man himself.” Evelyn clicked on a section of the notes. “It looks like Hal had a long history of concerns about his and his family’s welfare while they were out on shorter missions, and it’s possible that Betty’s idea that he snapped after receiving these so-called company orders is actually based on something a lot more realistic. Can you tell us something about your own perspective on this, Betty?”

Betty was still frozen, staring at the picture of the man who had been so obsessed by his own demons that he’d tried to kill his childen.

“I...” she managed eventually. “Okay. What kind of stuff would you like to know?”

“Well, we already know about some of it.” Evelyn was intense, leaning into Betty’s personal space as if she could see straight into Betty’s thoughts. “Your mother had you on an Adderall prescription for years. You were in therapy for a long time, until you started faking your prescriptions and taking more than your dose and you dropped out of appointments with your doctor. You’ve self-harmed.” She gestured to Betty’s hidden palms.

“Those...” Betty was horrified. “Those records should be sealed. I’m a minor.”

“Legally, you’re eighty-four, Betty. You’ve been identified as having the so-called serial killer genes-”

“No-one has called them that for centuries!” Veronica interjected, rising to her feet in fury. “That’s not even how genetics works! None of that defines behaviour in any way! What are you trying to say?! ‘Serial killer genes’ is the stupidest explanation I’ve ever heard in my life! No-one but a quack would try to blame this on something as ridiculous as goddamned pseudo-genetics! Who is this woman?”

“I think Betty fears she is a person capable of doing dark, terrible things,” Evelyn continued, fixing Veronica with the same, self-satisfied, reasonable expression. “I think she’s telling us the truth, or at least what she thinks is the truth. I think her father snapped, and hurt the rest of the crew. I think this monster that Betty saw is an articulation of her fear of what her father became. Her mind can’t confront the reality of what happened – that her own father tried to kill his family and she’s inherited the same darkness – so she invented a monster without motivations, who she can blame without facing her own fears.”

Betty was wordless, but Veronica looked ready to snap Evelyn’s neck.

“A very interesting idea,” said Wetherbee thoughtfully. McCoy was nodding, although Andrews, the red-headed lawyer, looked sick and very nearly as angry as Veronica herself. “You realise, of course, that since your accusations were made, there has been a steady stream of outrage, most recently from Mr Sowerberry, who represents Hiram Lodge, the CEO of LGC. He’s threatening to sue you for defamation of character, as well as the cost of the _Riverdale_ and its cargo. In light of Ms. Evernever’s analysis, we may argue that Miss Cooper was not in command of her full mental facilities at the time of the _Riverdale’s_ destruction, and therefore cannot be held responsible for the damage she caused. Thank you, Miss Cooper, Miss Evernever, that will be all for now.”

“That’s not fair,” said Betty quietly. “And that’s not all. Jason saw thousands of eggs. Thousands! What if you’re wrong, and I’m right, and someone finds them, and another one of those things finds people, and finds Earth?! If it gets down here, then that will be all, and all of this... all of this stuff that you think is so important, you can kiss all of this goodbye!”

The tribunal was silent. Veronica had her face in her hands, unable to face Betty after her outburst. I look crazy, Betty realised. That just convinced them that Evelyn was right.

“It is the finding of this court that Junior Mechanic E Cooper acted with questionable judgement, but may not have been in full command of her mental facilities during her actions in regard to the destruction of the _Riverdale._ As a minor she will be supervised by the courts while a full analysis takes place, but for the moment she is considered unfit to hold a position as a qualified mechanic , and will be released for an indefinite period of psychometric analysis...”

Betty had switched off almost as soon as Wetherbee started talking, air whooshing in her ears. What did it matter what happened to her, now? No-one would miss her if they decided she was too ill to rejoin society. She didn’t even know what normal life looked like on Earth anyway. What mattered to her was that no-one was worried about the creatures from LV-426.

“Betty, I’m so sorry,” Veronica was saying, as soon as Betty was capable of listening again. “You’ll live with me – I’ll make sure you’re okay, my family did this to you but I’m sure it was an accident, I stand by you, I don’t think you’re-”

“Wetherbee!” Betty blurted, leaping to her feet. “Sir. Why don’t you just check it out? Check out LV-426.”

“I don’t have to, Miss Cooper.” Wetherbee smiled pityingly at Betty. “The Farm has existed there for twenty years, and they’ve never complained about any hostile organism.”

“The Farm?” Betty shivered. “What’s the Farm?”

“Terraformers, under the aegis of one of those New Age gurus. There are a lot of them out there, process the atmosphere for a few decades, build themselves new worlds with LGC’s help. We call them a shake and bake colony.”

“How...” Betty’s mouth had gone dry. “How many people are there? Do the people in charge know what I’ve told you? Are they going to listen to you?”

“I’ve talked to the man in charge myself, read Edgar’s doctrines, Miss Cooper, and I see nothing to worry about. It’s all fully sanctioned by the colonial authorities and all the forty or fifty families seem perfectly happy. Excuse me, Miss Cooper.”

Wetherbee disappeared through the doors, as Betty slumped at the conference table. Veronica was anxiously twiddling her pearls, talking to Andrews, the lawyer, who was the only other person left in the room.

“Do you think my father did this, Mary?” the heiress asked. Andrews nodded.

“If he knows about your friendship with Betty, it’s possible that he engineered this result to please you, so Betty wouldn’t face criminal charges. Betty, I’m sorry, I know you’ve already been through more than enough but it is possible that this is the best outcome you could have hoped for.”

“Thanks for the gift, Daddy,” Veronica gritted out through her teeth. Betty gave her a wan smile.

“There is one other possibility, although it’s unlikely,” said Mary, sitting beside Betty. “If your story is true, hypothetically, Lodge-Grande Corp stands to receive some very bad press from what they did to the crew of the _Riverdale._ It’s possible that this is Hiram’s way of ensuring that Betty here is kept where he can control her.”

“Really?” said Betty. “Imagine that. _He's_ the only person who might believe me. Veronica, is your father capable of doing something like that?”

Veronica smiled darkly.

“My father is capable of doing anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly I was very uncomfortable writing this chapter because I hate the dark betty plotline so so much on the show. please stop making lili reinhart say those lines. she said she was uncomfortable. please stop making dark betty so sexual. please stop saying serial killer genes. please stop pretending hypnotism works like that. i'm really sorry if anything in this chapter comes across like that.


	4. Lodge-Grande Corp, Building Better Worlds!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty starts to build a new life, with the help of Veronica. Elsewhere in the universe, a certain Dr Edgar Evernever sends one of his flock out to search a certain set of coordinates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this chapter a few hours after we made a banner and applauded the NHS and key workers across the country, but especially the people in the hospital next door to us. in consequence i'm pissed off that the film has someone take the piss out of ripley for working a low-level supply job. fuck you, man, people deserve pay and rights and they're fucking essential to society, unlike a hedge-fund manager or one of those parasitic jobs.
> 
> anyway that hasn't got much to do with this chapter

The Farm had been an established colony for twenty years. Edgar Evernever had a lot – a _lot_ – of children, some of whom came with him to LV-426 to found their new farm away from the restrictive rules of Earth. For some reason, the government was not keen on him trying to oppress other people back on Earth, so he had decided to find a new planet where he could go around oppressing people in peace. It was a bit like the historical pilgrims, who weren’t allowed to oppress other English people, and travelled to a new continent to oppress the people there.

Edgar had used the money he had received from a few particularly diligent supporters to build his own rocket.

He had left a few of his wives and children behind, asking them to insinuate their way into positions of power where they could support the colony from afar before eventually joining them. For the most part, the Farm paid its dues to the Earth colonial government and were left alone to run their new society in relative peace. Very occasionally, orders came through from the colonial authorities which he had to obey.

Outside, the atmosphere was thin, but after twenty years of atmosphere processing it was breathable. Rovers could now go further and further to explore the planet, and see what resources could be flogged to the colonial authorities. Edgar was hoping for a rich seam of some precious resource to make the Farm the wealthiest colony in this quadrant, bringing new members to his flock, so he was happy to spend the Farm’s resources on exploration trips.

“Brother Edgar!” called a voice. “Greetings, Brother Edgar!”

Edgar grimaced; he had intended to spend some time with the newer members of the colony, educating them further in the Farm’s doctrines of equality and simplicity under his supervision, but the other colonists deferred to him (as was only proper), and often wanted his guidance.

“Yes, Brother Martin,” he said patiently. “What can I help you with?”

“You recall that we sent a wildcatter out last week to explore one of the uncharted sections?”

“I recall, Brother Martin. What of it?”

“They’ve made contact, say they’re on to something, want to know if their claim will be honoured.”

“Why wouldn’t their claim be honoured, Brother Martin? The Farm shares, but the Farm recognises effort, as you know, Brother Martin.”

“Of course, Brother Edgar!” Martin backtracked. “I wouldn’t doubt the Farm! But you sent them out with those coordinates on company orders, Brother.”

Edgar remembered that set of orders.

“It was an order given by the company, of course, Brother Martin, by someone on Earth who does not know our struggle to build our new world here. They have not seen fit to tell me why, and I have not asked. Since it takes two weeks for us to receive an answer, I will not use our resources to ask.”

“Of course, Brother Edgar,” said Martin again. “But... what should I tell the wildcatter?”

Edgar sighed.

“The Farm respects the importance of claims, within reason. If our family members find something, it will be shared among the colony, but their rights will be first and they will receive all credit if the colonial government chooses to ask us where they found it.”

A crew of children, some of whom may have been Edgar’s, raced past, giggling with excitement.

“Children!” shouted Martin. “You should be using this time for quiet and reflection! The operating room of the Farm is for peace and calm decision-making, not childish antics and hysteria!”

“Let them have their fun, Brother Martin,” said Edgar indulgently. “We are building a better world for them. There is a place here for joy.”

Outside, the rover’s wheels struggled over the rocky terrain of the unmapped range. The rock formations looked unfamiliar to anyone raised on Earth, although only one of the inhabitants of the rover had ever been to Earth.

“Settle down back there, would ya?” she said, struggling to concentrate on the controls over the sounds of her kid playing in the back. “I’m sorry you can’t play around in the ducts like normal, kiddo, but we’re gonna be sitting pretty after this, I promise.”

“Kay, Mom!” came the reply. “I’m gonna have my headphones on, okay?”

“Okay, baby.”

Something loomed out of the darkness, and the woman threw the brakes on.

“Right where they said it would be,” she muttered. “I’m gonna have the whole town. Edgar’s wrapped around my pinky, that idiot Martin owes me big money... Hell yeah, this is just the icing on the cake. Kiddo, c’mere and take a look at this, will ya?”

Her passenger scrambled forwards, mouth dropping open at the site of the alien craft rearing up out of the mist.

“Kid, we have scored big this time! Oh, yeah, we moved to this place at the right time, baby, I can feel it.”

The rover started up again, and trundled closer to the strange alien ship. It curved up out of the ground like a weird bisected donut, dwarfing the rover under the shadow of one of its arms.

“What is it, Mom?”

“I’m not sure.” The rover reached the far side of the ship. “Let’s see if we can’t get a closer look at that thing. I’ll take a look and we’ll call it in as soon as I know a little bit more about it.”

The rover pulled up as close as it could get to the craft. Ahead of it was a substantial crack in the outer wall of the ship, beckoning inquisitive travellers to take a look inside.

“You stay inside, kiddo. I mean it.” The woman loaded up her gear, complete with torch and emergency oxygen. It was routine to the two of them, after years flitting between colonies like this looking for the next opportunity. “If I’m not back in an hour, you call that crackpot Edgar, okay? But make sure he knows this is our find.”

“Okay, Mom. Bye!”

Leaping down from the rover, the woman picked her way into the spaceship.

An hour passed.

She did not come back.

Brother Martin, still manning the communications desk at the Farm, received the call, given in a trembling little voice.

“Mayday,” the kid said shakily. “Mayday, mayday! My mom went to look at the ship – the ship we found – and she hasn’t come back yet! Please, I’m all alone and I think... I think something bad’s happened.”

Martin couldn’t help but agree.

* * *

“Am I a project?” Betty wondered once, when she and Veronica had imbibed too much of Hiram’s expensive rum. She hadn’t really meant to say it aloud, and was terrified that she’d insulted her only friend in the world.

“No, no,” Veronica said drunkenly. “I guess a little at first – when I first met you it was because I heard what happened to you and I thought, mais oui, I need to help her, even if I don’t know her, it’s not fair, this can be my new thing? – but once I knew you, I just thought oh! We’re meant to be friends. I know we are. You’re my bestie who’s both four years younger than me and sixty-one years older than me at the same time, who else can say that about their best friend?!”

Betty had giggled, said something rude about being an old lady, and fell asleep on their sofa. Both of them had woken up with horrendous headaches, and spent the morning bonding over a hangover.

When she was more sober, Veronica had explained what she meant a little more.

“Why did you come to help me?” Betty asked. “Why be nice? You could have ignored me and I would have gone straight to prison, or... whatever they do with people who committed a crime sixty years ago.”

Veronica sighed.

“I love my father,” she said, “But he’s a terrible person. I grew ignoring all of the bad press about our family, about how awful my father is, how me and my mom are just rich socialites preying off normal people. Once we thought Daddy was going to jail, and we would lose all of our money and leave the city and... It was right. All of those awful articles about me were right. And it was like a wake-up call. I made a pact with myself – I wasn’t going to lose this opportunity to become a better version of myself. I still love my dad, and I still want to run our company one day, I think we can do great things, but I want us to be better.”

“That’s so great, V,” said Betty seriously. She disagreed, privately; Lodge-Grande Corp had been getting away with violations of every ethical code on or off the planet since before she’d been born, let alone the sixth- or seventh-generation Lodge that she was staying with. However, the fact that Veronica was even slightly aware of her company’s deep, deep flaws and wanted to change them was better than nothing.

Maybe under Veronica, families wouldn’t get sacrificed in the name of acquiring new ways of killing.

Maybe.

Betty had lived with Veronica since the older girl had found Betty living in her miserable LGC-issued accommodations with Caramel, a week after being discharged from Quiet Mercy’s medical station. Veronica had a suite of rooms aboard the station, and had instantly offered to put Betty and the world’s oldest cat up in the spare bedroom. Betty had tried to refuse, but the prospect of space, after the cramped conditions of the _Riverdale,_ was too enticing to ignore.

She was refusing to live rent-free; while LGC had removed the prospect of getting her old job as a Junior Mechanic back, or her going to university to get a degree the way her mother had wanted, there was no shortage of work in the shipyards or the docks on Quiet Mercy. Veronica had objected, and Betty knew that her pay barely covered a tenth of Veronica’s suite, with its real water shower and its personal simulation suite, but it felt better to Betty. It felt more like she was a real person, with a job that mattered if she did it well, and people who knew her name outside their rooms. People whispered behind Betty’s back – t _hat’s her – she’s the one from the Riverdale – her father went mad and killed them all – she went mad too and blew up the ship_ – but she distracted herself, throwing herself into her work and Veronica’s insane celebrity gossip. One day she hoped to earn enough to pay for a visa down to the planet, visit the real Riverdale, and see open skies.

It lasted for a little while. A few months passed, Betty growing closer to eighteen and eighty-five (“How will we throw your birthday parties, B?”), seeing her therapist diligently, building up an understanding of the technology that had changed since her days growing up aboard the _Riverdale._ She felt as if her life were still on pause; that whatever had stopped the passage of time for her, asleep on the _Register,_ was still keeping her in stasis, waiting for another wake-up call.

It came one morning when Betty was feeling particularly bad; curled up around Caramel, she could hardly bring herself to move, and was thinking of calling in one of her rare sick days, as well as calling her therapist. A knock sounded at her door, and she forced herself to her feet. She had heard voices through the door earlier, and assumed that Veronica had guests over.

Two unfamiliar men stood outside. Veronica stood behind them, her expression wavering between apologetic and incandescent with rage.

“Hi, Miss Cooper,” said the nearest man. “I’m Nick St Clair, with LGC. This is Lieutenant Doiley, of the Colonial Marine Corps-”

Betty slammed her door in their faces.

“B,” said Veronica’s muffled voice. “B, I’m so sorry but they have to talk to you. They’ve lost contact with the Farm on LV-426.”

Oh.

Oh no.

“I don’t believe this,” said Betty. Veronica was sashaying through the kitchen noisily, preparing coffee more aggressively than anyone Betty had ever seen, including Alice at her most passive-aggressive. “You gave up on me. You told me I was delusional, constructing a fantasy to justify the destruction of your ship, and now you want me to go back out there? Where you destroyed my family? Forget it. It’s..." Betty had to force herself to say the words, unused to denying help to anyone, "...it's not my problem.”

“Can I finish?” asked the St Clair one. He was lounging in one of Veronica’s dining chairs, clearly comfortable in opulent surroundings. Doiley was considerably less comfortable, sitting ramrod straight. Maybe he was just that kind of military.

“No.” Betty and Veronica spoke simultaneously. Veronica finished. “There’s no way you’re making my girl go.”

“Miss Cooper, you wouldn’t be going in with the troops,” said Doiley, accepting the coffee that Veronica placed carefully in front of him – no point in ruining a damask tablecloth for a single angry interaction. “I can guarantee your safety.”

“These colonial marines are the kind of good, strong, tough stock you’d be jonesing for,” said St Clair. “They’re stocking state-of-the-art firepower. Nothing they can’t handle. Right, Doiley?”

“That’s true,” said Doiley, eager to gloat about his military prowess. “We’ve been trained to deal with situations like this. Trained not to hesitate.”

“Well, then, you don’t need me,” said Betty. “I’m not a soldier.”

“Look, Miss Cooper, we don’t know what’s going on down there. Could be just a downed transmitter. But if it’s not... I would like you there, as an advisor. That’s all.”

“What’s your interest in all this? Why are you going?” asked Betty. St Clair hardly looked like he’d be any good in a fight against those creatures.

“The corporation co-financed the Farm,” interjected Veronica, before St Clair could say something non-committal. “That’s why, isn’t it, Nicky? Daddy’s been getting into a lot of terraforming, building better worlds. You’ve seen that commercial, those idealised families setting off into space.”

_My family set off into space. Your corporation sent us there to die._

“I’m sorry,” said Betty abruptly, rising to her feet. “I’ve got to go to work.”

“You’re working on the docks, right?” St Clair gave one of the pitying smiles that Betty had become so familiar with in the last few months. “Working loaders and forklifts and maintenance.”

“Yeah, so?” Betty did not appreciate his dismissive tone. It wasn’t how she’d envisioned her life, but that kind of work was essential to keeping any space work or food supplies running, and she had no shame in doing it while she could.

“Nothing. It’s very... impressive, you keeping busy with the only kind of work you can get, Miss Cooper. All of us do.” St Clair’s gesture included Veronica, who bristled. She might not understand Betty’s desire to busy herself with mechanical work, but she had supported her without question. “But what would you say if I could get you into one of the best theoretical engineering courses available on the planet? And I mean on the planet, on an Earth campus, not cramped out here on one of these floating prisons. LGC is fully prepared to fund it, or any other degree of your choice, and support you financially throughout.”

“If she goes, right, Nick darling?” questioned Veronica bitterly. “I bet my father put you up to this.”

St Clair shook his head fondly.

“If she goes, yes, Ronnie. It’s a second chance. I think the best thing in the world would be for you to get out there and face this thing, get back on the horse.”

“I’ve had my psych evaluation this month,” said Betty. “Don’t pretend you know me.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it.” Betty blanched, and wondered just how much access LGC had to her personal information. “You wake up every night, your sheets are soaking with sweat-”

“I said no,” said Betty coldly, keeping her temper, “And I mean it! Now please, leave. I am not going back, and I... I would not be any good to you if I did.”

“Okay,” said St Clair, rolling his eyes slightly. “We get it. Would you do me a favour, Ronnie? Ask her to think about it.”

“Get out of my flat, you fucking cretin,” said Veronica, without hesitation. St Clair smirked, and stood. Doiley followed suit, mumbling a thanks for the coffee, and left behind Nick.

Betty’s lip was trembling.

“Oh, B,” said Veronica, rushing to envelop Betty in a hug. The dam burst, and Betty started to weep silent, painful tears, shaking in Veronica’s arms. “Don’t listen to them, okay? You don’t owe those bastards anything.”

Betty couldn’t bring herself to nod, just clung to Veronica. She was so grateful to Veronica – always would be, for being her friend and giving her a foot to stand on and an ear to listen after Betty’s world had gone up in flames – but she wanted Polly, to tell her that she was her guardian angel. She wanted Charles to tease her; even Alice, whose love was sometimes horrible and confining and felt more like a prison than a comfort, but she was Betty’s mom.

Oh God, Betty still wanted her Dad.

Some hours later, Betty jolted awake with a scream. She was tangled in the sheets, sweat trickling down her body. Veronica’s lovely flat had become the black, cramped tunnels of the Riverdale; the sheets holding her down were _the creature’s limbs, they have her arms and her legs and they are going to tear her apart like they tore Polly apart, blonde hair turned sticky brown-red with blood on Charles’ head, where is Mom, it took Mom, Dad hurt me and he let it on the ship, he was going to kill all of us to save that creature-_

“B?”

Veronica stood at her door, clad in her silk pyjama set.

“Can I come in?”

Betty nodded, still choking on her tears. Caramel prowls around on the bed, rubbing her head against Betty’s torso affectionately. Veronica padded in, sitting on the bed next to Betty, careful not to touch her in case Betty was still caught up in the dream.

“I’m going to kill Nick,” Veronica muttered. “No. I’ll have Daddy fire him and destroy his parents’ stock portfolio. He’d find that worse.”

Betty gasped a laugh through her tears, clutching at her sternum where a moment sure she’d been sure she felt something punching through.

She lurched out of her bedroom, and took a shower. When she returned, Veronica was attempting to change her sheets, although Betty knew full well that Veronica had never done such a thing in her life.

“Who is that Nick guy, anyway?” asked Betty. “You clearly know him, V.”

“Ugh. An ex. An ex who was already definitely an ex, but is a much _exer_ ex than before after today’s performance. Anyway, we’re not talking about Nick St Sicko. Are you feeling better? Do you think you can sleep now, or shall we stay up watching _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_ and fast-forward through all the racist scenes with the Japanese neighbour?”  
Betty was silent for a moment.

“What if he’s right, V?” She contemplated the mess of her bed, the ragged tears in her palms that she couldn’t stop opening, no matter how hard she tried. “What if... going back out there and helping them is what I should do? A way to atone for what my dad did?”

“Betty, no,” Veronica protested. “You don’t need to atone for anything.”

“But I don’t think I can handle it. I haven’t stopped working, or slept a wink, since getting back. Nick St Clair and my therapist think I’ve been hiding, or avoiding, and they’re right. Someday it’ll hit me when I’m at work, or out with you and I’ll have to face everything that happened. All of these things, that I don’t have control over, it just terrifies me. Maybe going back there, to destroy them, it will help me reach some kind of peace with it.”

Veronica looked at her for a moment.

“B, you’re very brave and very stupid.”

Betty gave her a watery grin.

“We’re going there to destroy them, right? Not to study. Not to bring back. But to wipe them out.”

“We most certainement are.”

“Tell your _Nicky_ I’m in.” Betty paused, and realised what Veronica had said. “We? V, you aren’t coming.”

“I am,” said Veronica, tossing her hair back magnificently. “You don’t have to atone for anything, Betty Cooper. I, on the other hand, am a major shareholder in Lodge-Grande Corp, and we most certainly do. Besides, I’m always telling Daddy I should get a wider range of experience in the business. This is the perfect opportunity to show him exactly what I mean. We’ll be protected by some big, buff soldiers with broad shoulders and excellent muscle tone, what’s not to like? We’re going to swoop in, rescue the colonists and destroy them. It’ll be like a working holiday.”

“You’re insane, V.”

“No,” said Veronica. “I’m serious. Our company caused you and your family so much pain. If you have to see this through, I have to see this through.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote the edgar scenes with him running his cult colony and then i was like 'should i make this more riverdale?' and then it dawned on me. that's why he built the rocket. i'm sorry to say i'm really pleased with myself for writing something so deeply stupid.
> 
> remember when riverdale wrote scenes where betty and veronica interacted, instead of just the script having them say 'we're best friends' to each other? nah me neither. show, don't tell guys. don't get me started on jughead and archie. or, whatever series 4 is trying to say, betty and archie. none of those characters are friends anymore because they never hang out. making a pact to fake someone's death is not the same as sitting around having a movie night or going for lunch.
> 
> also i feel like going back to face the monsters is not the best therapy ripley-betty could have gone for 
> 
> it's a film, I guess you have to allow it
> 
> (guys get ready for brooding space jug)


	5. The Whyte Wyrm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty makes a new acquaintance, as she and Veronica set out to atone for their fathers' sins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes. that's right, i'm back on my bullshit.
> 
> well brooding spaceJuggie is here and is going to sit here consumed with lust for the rest of the evening. he's also titanically confused by it.
> 
> get ready to meet a whole crew of serpents! i am not keen on most of these characters in canon because they never bother to write plotlines or backstories for even fairly important characters! they are fun though! 
> 
> anyway people were missing jughead so here he is, just as pretentious as ever

Lift-offs and landings aboard the _Riverdale_ have been few and far-between; Betty can count on one hand the number of times that she has taken part in one. The ship is not exactly designed for atmosphere, although it can manage here and there. Most of the time, they leave the _Riverdale_ in orbit above Luna Station, and either take the Register or one of the passenger shuttles that nips between Earth and the Moon every few hours.

When they try to take off from the unknown planetoid, the _Riverdale_ is struggling already; the landing damaged a lot of the ship’s systems, leaving them blind on B and C decks despite Charles, Chic and Betty’s best efforts. Alice is determined to take off.

Jason is still unconscious, kept in the medlab under Hal’s unusually watchful eye. Betty wonders if he feels guilty that he has always hated Jason so much, and now something terrible has happened to the young man. Betty herself certainly feels guilty that she tried to stop her mother and sister coming aboard the ship with their casualty, although Polly says she understands. Polly is in a constant state of panic about her injured boyfriend, barely able to hold herself together for the lift-off.

The ship is shaking so much, Betty thinks she will tear herself apart before getting back to the cargo that they have left in orbit.

“Dust in the intakes again, Number Two’s overheating, baby,” she hears Chic say. Charles tells him to spin on it.

“We’re hot, and we’re getting hotter,” Betty says. “Engine room status?”

Hal replies incomprehensibly. Polly, as per usual, pulls her herself together with great aplomb, and between her and Betty they make sure that the gravity is engaged, and the routines to keep the ship functional are ready to go as soon as they reach orbit.

“ _She’s running beautifully_ ,” says Charles over the intercom. The _Riverdale_ stops shaking, and pulls into a comfortable orbit. Betty sometimes forgets, because her family is so chaotic, how well they all work together when they need to. Alice commands them from the Captain’s chair, handing out rare compliments to the handling and the maintenance of their ship, and Polly reaches for Betty’s hand, smiling gratefully.

Soon they will enter their cryo-tubes, and Jason will be safely in stasis. Doctors with more experience than Hal will be able to look after him, when they return to Earth. The xeno-biology community will be fascinated to see their little alien visitor.

It is over.

They are going home.

* * *

“Serpents! Get ready to ship out, we’ve got a job to do!”

Jughead rolled his eyes at the sergeant, closed his battered notebook, and stubbed his last cigarette out on the floor. Keller, the other corporal leapt up smartly, kicking one of the other soldier’s boots.

“Alright, you heard the man, we’re heading out to the boat,” Topaz drawled. “Jones, you ever gonna get a new datapad? That old hard copy is as obsolete as Sweet Pea’s chances of making corporal.”

“Fuck you, Toni,” responded the marine in question. “Who wants to be corporal when we’ve got the Prince over here? Four more weeks and I’m out, Topaz. I don’t need to be a fucking corporal.”

“Look alive, Serpents, let’s move,” said Jughead, ignoring them. Being in command was not a position he had looked for, and he only really got it through an unwanted dose of nepotism; but it came naturally to him, and he was good at it. _Someday,_ he always comforted himself, _I’ll get out of here, be the first Jones to go to an Earth college, write for a living and never get in a fight again._

He feared he was already too angry for that, but at least the fights could be on the ground, without pulse rifles or a gang of trained thugs.

That was harsh, cruel and untrue. Most of the people on his squad had joined the marines from shitty colonies like his own Southside, eager to risk their lives for a chance at a paycheck and a legal status as a citizen of Earth. Lots of them had their own dreams for life after the Colonial Marines, plans they were already working on. Jughead knew some of them; Clayton always had his sketchpad out, observing images of their lives in the Marines with painful detail. He had a girl, Nancy, who was waiting for him on one of the oldest and nicest colonies, Pembroke. Chuck kept his sketch of her pinned up inside his locker, pressing a kiss against her for luck and love every time they deployed. Jughead didn’t understand that much himself, but he had always been a little mystified by the stock people put on romance.

Blossom, one of the corporals and the best pilot on the squad, had something serious going with Toni Topaz. In downtime they were usually found curled up together, planning some mischief for the outside world after they served their time in the Corps. Jughead had never quite understood what Cheryl Blossom, a girl from a notorious family of dubious wealth, was doing in the Colonial Marines, but he wasn’t going to blame her if it was a rebellion against her family.

Toni, he understood. Like him, Sweet Pea and Fangs, she came from one of the newer colonies, where like was hard and short, and the atmosphere processing was years away from making even the best-suited Goldilocks planet a pleasant place to live. Kids from colonies like that made up most of the Colonial Marines, desperate to find some kind of community and meaning away from the poverty that affected their whole lives. He liked Sweet Pea and Fangs, even if they were violent idiots half the time.

Maybe Jughead had been here long enough that he was just as much of a violent idiot as them. The stuff they saw could drive you crazy; half the colonies were so corrupt that he was constantly seeing conspiracies, most of which turned out to be right, however crazy they were. He kept a lot of the stranger things written in his notebook, thinking mildly that he might one day turn it into a novel – change a few names, make some of the crazier stuff a bit more subtle, insult LGC and the colonial authorities at great length...

The USS _Whyte Wyrm_ was one of the finest ships in the Earth fleet, equipped and provisioned for far more than a single squad of marines.

“What do you think they’re sending just us out for in a ship this size? Aren’t there normally a few more squads?” he heard Fangs whisper. Keller, who was one of the more level headed marines, as well as the medical corporal, shushed him with a flirtatious finger to his lips.

 _Maybe I should be discouraging fraternisation among the squad_ , thought Jughead. Their lives were so dangerous, though, and the chances of dying fairly high, and Jughead had never found it in him to ruin the bits of happiness that his squad found where they could.

They boarded the ship, finding their lockers and stowing the gear they would need after hyper-sleep. Jughead hung his precious beanie, the last thing he remembered his mother giving him, on its usual hook, and slid his notebook under the many others that he’d accrued over a couple of years in the Marines.

“Jones, Blossom, Keller, the lieutenant wants you to meet our passengers!”

Jughead rolled his eyes. He had heard rumours that they were taking three civilians with them, but evidently someone special was coming if they needed to meet all of the squad’s NCOs.

Doiley and the sergeant were waiting for them at the airlock.

“Miss Lodge, Mr St Clair, Miss Cooper, this is Sergeant Jones, and Corporals Jones, Blossom and Keller,” said Doiley. “I expect you to show our guests as much welcome as possible. If you’d like to show our guests to where they can store their belongings for the trip...”

“That’s Veronica Lodge,” Jughead heard Kevin stage-whisper. “Isn’t she the most fabulous thing ever to grace the _Whyte Wyrm_? Except you, of course, Cheryl.”

“That cape,” hissed Cheryl. “The cut – the length – that is serious couture!”

The dark-haired woman, who he assumed was Veronica, smirked directly at Cheryl, and stepped forwards to link arms with Kevin.

“Thank God,” she said. “Corporal Keller? You can show me all around the ship. Tell me _everything_ I need to know.”

“Corporal Blossom,” said St Clair, “If I could have your assistance? I won’t take no for an answer.”

“Of course!” said Cheryl, flashing the man a dazzling fake smile. Her eyes were wide with irritation, though only someone who had know her as long as the Serpents would have picked up on it. “Right this way, Mr St Clair.”

“Oh, please. Call me Nick.”

That left Jughead with Cooper.

It dawned on him after a moment that he had been staring at her since she stepped through the airlock, and her expression was becoming more pleading by the moment. Belatedly, he realised that a six-foot-tall marine staring at someone might be more than a little intimidating. Toni had informed him repeatedly that his resting expression was a scowl.

He had just encountered the problem that Miss Cooper was probably the most beautiful person he had ever seen. He hadn’t seen a lot of people, to be fair; he’d left his colony at fifteen without ever having developed an interest in sex or relationships, and by the time he thought he might have an interest after all, he was ensconced in the Serpents, and hadn’t been able to perceive any of his squadmates as people he could connect to like that, rather than teammates or friends. He thought Toni might have been interested, once, and maybe even Sweet Pea (and definitely a junior officer called something ridiculous like Brat or Bret who’d come aboard, tried to intimidate him and then propositioned Jughead rather guiltily), but the idea of pursuing those interests as anything other than an intellectual curiosity filled him with confusion, and a kind of mild repulsion.

 _This is so unprofessional_ , he thought. _Stop staring_.

“Corporal Jones?” said Cooper, squaring her shoulders. “I’m Elizabeth Cooper. I’m hoping you’ll show me where the lockers and the hyper-sleep tubes are.”

Not as fragile and intimidated as she initially seemed, then. Jughead unfroze, and snapped back into what he hoped was some semblance of discipline.

“This way, Miss Cooper,” he said smartly. “And it’s Jughead, if you don’t mind.”

“...Corporal Jughead, then.” Cooper seemed mildly amused. “Any reason?”

“First name.” Jughead showed her the main canteen, his favourite area on the ship. “The sergeant’s called Jones as well. Makes it easier not to confuse things.”

“I guess it’s a common surname.”

“Very common. The lockers are this way, the showers are in here if you felt like a wash before or after hyper – I know I always do – the lockers should have enough room for your bags, are your bags here? Do you need more room, I don’t know if they’ve assigned you one of the officer’s bunks – Doiley has the biggest...”

Jughead, who prided himself on being a loner and a man of few words to all but his closest friends, was gabbling. Luckily, Cooper seemed to be taking all the information in with an earnest look on her – _beautiful, beautiful_ – face, rather than laughing at him, or ignoring him.

He was already mentally adding a blonde heroine with huge green eyes to his mental draft of his novel. Maybe she was a girl who wanted his protagonist’s help, asking him to investigate some crime that no-one else was interested in, desperate to escape the confines of their small, cosy colony. Or maybe – maybe she was trapped in some psychopath’s game, trying to find a serial killer with the hero’s help and support, and after misunderstandings and pain and badly-written angst that made no sense, they came back together to solve it. Maybe they can fall in love. Jughead had no such hopes for himself – he didn’t even know her, and suspected he would never meet her again once this mission is over – but he liked the idea of her remaining somewhere inside his internal narration, polite and brave and the heroine of his story.

“My quarters are assigned in the officer’s deck,” Cooper said, apologetically. “I don’t really need it; I’ve just got the one bag, and I’m very used to living in cramped conditions, but I guess I’ve been assigned them now, so I don’t want to cause confusion.”

“Of course, ma’am,” said Jughead.

“No, no.” Cooper gave him a shy grin, looking up at him from under long lashes. “If you’re Jughead, I’m Betty. It’s an order, Corporal Jughead.”

“Betty,” said Jughead, relishing the taste of her name in his mouth. “It’s not exactly regulation, ma’am.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to cope,” said Betty, a glimmer of brightness peeking through her serious demeanour again.

Was she flirting? Oh, God, Jughead didn’t know. He had never flirted before – he’d never even _wanted_ to flirt before – and he was a corporal, responsible for her safety. Maybe he should try to nip this infatuation in the bud before it became something that would compromise him during the mission. Maybe he could ask Kevin to chaperone her from here on in; Kevin definitely wouldn’t develop an inappropriate fascination with long limbs, the shape of her hips masked by her corduroy jumpsuit...

“Oh look, it’s Kevin!” he said dully, as they approached the officers’ quarters. He didn’t even know Miss Cooper – _Betty_ – and he certainly didn’t want to make assumptions based on such a short interaction. She could be a snob, like that St Clair prick, or an arrogant expert who would order them around through Doiley. It would be better to ignore her as much as possible; it was just very rare for Jughead to feel as strongly as he did about a person based on their appearance, and he was sorely tempted to indulge his interest, and satisfy his curiosity.

He handed Betty over to Kevin brusquely, ignoring the hurt look on her pretty face (why couldn’t he ignore how pretty she was? It was ridiculous. Toni and Cheryl were both objectively attractive, he knew that, but Betty was so _pretty),_ and turned to look at their other guests.

“You can just put those there,” said Lodge, gesturing with that unconscious imperialism that the wealthy seemed to adopt. “I’m sure I won’t need all of it, but I couldn’t travel without my matching luggage, could I?”

 _Those_ were six suitcases, Sweet Pea and Fangs buckling under the weight of three each. Jughead was flabbergasted. He tried not to look at Betty, but the temptation was too strong, and her expression of fond exasperation was a relief after the hurt he’d provoked earlier.

“Are these the Pierre Cardin set from the spring collection?” demanded Cheryl, appearing from the cabin assigned to St Clair. She looked at the suitcases with profound jealousy. “These are tres chic, Miss Lodge. It’s... an experience, to see you again.”

“Really, Cheryl,” said Lodge. “An experience is definitely the word for it.”

“V?” said Betty questioningly. “Do you know Corporal... Blossom?”

“We knew each other at school,” said Cheryl tartly, talking over Veronica’s answer. “I’ve shown Mr St Claire his room, Hobo; I don’t care to show him much more. If anyone needs me I’ll be down by the hyper-tubes with Toni.”

That wasn’t exactly in line with their orders, but Jughead knew Cheryl well enough to assume that Veronica Lodge was not the only thing that had provoked her ire. He would have to keep an eye on the St Clair character. He didn’t think much of Lodge or St Clair, really, although Betty seemed fond enough of Lodge, and he thought Betty might be a good judge of character.

Perhaps he was imposing his own assumptions on Betty.

“The hyper-sleep tubes will be ready for you as soon as you’re prepared,” he said sharply. “Miss Lodge, Miss Cooper, Corporal Keller will help you as soon as you’re ready to go.”

“Oh, thank you, _Jughead_ ,” muttered Kevin. “Ladies, I will be right here.”

Jughead turned sharply on his heel, and marched down the corridor towards the hyper-sleep section. He did not turn to look at Betty, mentally casting her as the precious Eurydice to his Orpheus.

Coming out of hyper-sleep rather than cryo was much more pleasant, like waking from a nap, rather than a chilly hangover. The USS _Whyte Wyrm_ was very different from the Riverdale, too; it had high ceilings, bright lights, wide, open spaces. Betty had never been aboard a ship that had been designed for so many people, although she got the impression they were shipping out with a skeleton crew.

What a skeleton crew, though.

She had seen several of the crew members before they entered hyper-sleep; Keller, the medical corporal, seemed friendly and pleasant enough, though completely absorbed by the notorious Veronica Lodge, by comparison to the fairly unexciting Elizabeth Cooper. Cheryl Blossom – could she be some relation of the long-dead Jason? Betty both hoped so and dreaded mentioning it to her – was, coincidentally, one of Veronica’s other exes. The ship would have seemed full of unlikely coincidences, were it not for the fact that Veronica’s father was pulling the strings, and therefore any coincidence was probably intentional. The sergeant was a tall man, calming and confident next to the more jittery Lieutenant Doiley.

Then there was Corporal Jughead Jones.

He had been scowling at them all as soon as they boarded the ship, although he was surprisingly forthcoming, at first. He seemed to lose interest in her as soon as he had done his duties showing her the ship, and Betty was surprised to find herself hurt by his abrupt dismissal. How ridiculous and embarrassing, to encounter her first truly good-looking man in more than half a century and instantly want his attention.

But he was _so_ good-looking. His hair was longer than the regulation cuts on the other soldiers she’d seen, or Cheryl and the other woman (Topaz?) with their elaborate tight braids. He was slighter in frame than a lot of the other marines, and he seemed awfully young to be a corporal. If Betty hadn’t known better, she would have guessed that he wasn’t any older than her – although if she counted real years, she was technically old enough to be his grandmother. He had been polite, switching between loquacious and laconic swiftly, and she wondered how such a young man had been promoted to his position. Presumably he was very competent; the thought made her feel a little safer.

She had stared at his hyper-sleep tube, next to hers, before getting in and letting Sergeant Jones activate her own tube. In sleep, his face relaxed and he looked even younger, pretty freckles dotted on his clear skin.

She had to stop thinking like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah i love pretentious people, okay? if people weren't pretentious nothing would get done. did people go up to syd barratt and tell him he was pretentious? probably, and actually we really shouldn't romanticise what happened to him, but hopefully you take my point.
> 
> toni is vasquez because she is the main female serpent. i toyed with the idea of making veronica vasquez for a whole thirty seconds before i concluded that a: veronica is not even slightly vasquez and b: oh boy the casting for vasquez was gonna be weird either way
> 
> also riverdale chuck clayton has no place here, except maybe redeemed chuck who didn't fucking deserve what cheryl did? what the fuck was that?! that was cruel and horrible to do that to the comics' first ever black character. it would be like writing kevin keller and reducing his character to a single element. which they also did.
> 
> fuck, it's hard to not write this as cruelly is riverdale does after you've watched it.
> 
> anyway jughead fancying no-one into adulthood and assuming it will never happen, then abruptly falling in lust, is a mild self-insert. apparently it happens. it's very embarrassing but i guess we can't help it. luckily for him, betty feels much the same and is almost equally embarrassed.
> 
> if only they weren't in a horror film.


	6. The Briefing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty finds an unappreciative audience above LV-426. Jughead falls a little further in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which we meet a few more serpents, and hear more from jughead about life in space.
> 
> actually mainly it's jughead eating and learning more about who betty is as a person. he'd be way more chill if she were unpleasant; instead, he's just gonna panic harder.
> 
> NB: guys i can't believe you prefer my angry meta two-shot about JB and feminism and how problematic the show is, to this monstrosity. i am mortally offended that you all have taste.

Betty has already tried to ask Hal about it.

“It’s amazing,” she says, startling her father as he pores over his scans of the creature, clearly fascinated. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, yet, honey,” her father replies distractedly. “Did you want anything?”

“Actually, Dad, I need to ask you about something,” Betty says. “How’s, uh, Jason?”

“Fine, Betty, no changes. You can tell Polly, too.”

“And... our, uh, guest?”

“Oh, I’m still collating, honey, he’s got an outer layer of protein polysaccharids, couple of funny habits which give him a prolonged resistance to adverse conditions... Is that enough for your article, Betty?”

“Ha ha, Dad,” says Betty. Hal shuffles her aside a little, asks her not to fiddle with stuff at her workstation. Betty apologises, but she is not ready to let her fears go. “You let him in, Dad.”

“Honey, I was obeying a direct order from your mother. What would you have done?”

“I would have obeyed the science division’s basic quarantine law, Dad! Or did you... forget it?”

“Betty, honey.” Her father smiles placatingly. “I didn’t forget that.”

“Oh, so we just broke it, Dad?”

“Betty, what do you think I did? What would you have done with Jason, hmm? You know his only chance of survival was to get him in here.”

“...You hate Jason.” Betty can’t believe she is saying this, can’t believe that she fears her father has endangered them all by letting Jason back aboard the ship, and is in denial about the consequences of his actions. “You wanted him to survive that much? You’d break all the rules?”

“Of course, Betty. What else would it be?”

“Dad... by breaking quarantine, you’ve risked all of our lives.”

“Honey,” her father sighs, as if he, too, can’t believe Betty is asking him this. “Your mother is safe aboard. Your sister, too. It’s a risk I was willing to take.”

“It’s a pretty big risk, Dad.”

“I know that, Betty.” Hal goes silent, and looks back into his microscope. Some seconds later, he realises that Betty is still there. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“To be honest, Dad,” Betty says bitterly, knowing that her father is not going to start listening to her fears, “No, I didn’t.”

Maybe her mother will listen.

“Young lady, you are not going to get me to change my mind, all right. The decision has been made.” Alice is marching through the _Riverdale,_ coffee in one hand, dismissive gestures in the other. Betty trails behind her, well aware that her protests will probably be ignored.

“I’m not trying to change your mind, Mom, I’m not trying, I just want you to listen to – will you listen to me?” Before she knows what she is doing, her palm slaps against the door button, trapping Alice in front of her. It is a display of defiance that neither Betty nor Alice are not used to, and Alice turns to fix her with her trademark look of disappointment and anger.

“Mom, please, tell me,” Betty begs. “Why are you leaving that kind of decision to Dad? He’s been acting... crazy, ever since the ship woke us up in this place!”

Hal has been acting crazy. He let Jason, Alice and Polly back aboard the ship, when Betty was prepared to quarantine them outside until that... _thing_ on Jason’s face was more understandable, and they could prove it wasn’t a risk.

“Look, Elizabeth, I just run the ship,” says Alice, brittle with her fury. “Anything that has to do with the science division, your milquetoast father has the final word!”

“How does that happen?!” Betty is pushing back, for one of the first times in her life. She has always gone quiet before, taken the path of least resistance against her mother’s periodic explosions, but now she is too afraid and too angry herself to passively accept her father’s stupid decisions.

“It happens, honey, because that’s what the company wants to happen.” The endearment drips off Alice’s tone like the acid that the creatures bleeds.

“Since when is that standard procedure?” Betty snaps.

“Standard procedure is that to do what the hell they tell you to do, grin, and bear it. I expect the same from you, Elizabeth! I swear, you’re sounding crazy, just like Polly.”

“Stop saying that, she’s not crazy!” Betty can’t believe her mother is bringing this up now. Polly does not cope well with space sometimes, clings to Betty and Charles and now Jason against profound claustrophobia, nor the agoraphobia of the immense emptiness surrounding the _Riverdale._ “Has Dad ever behaved like this before? I don’t trust him with this!”

“You don’t have to trust us. We’re your parents. If this is you acting out to get attention-”

“Mom, what possible reason could I have for making these worries up?!”

“I don’t know, maybe you cooked this all up because you were bored. Go to your cabin, Betty. I don’t want to listen to any more about this!”

Alice never listens to Betty.

This time, it will come at the cost of her life.

* * *

The hyper-sleep tubes on the _Whyte Wyrm_ , unlike the _Riverdale’s_ cryo-suite, were laid out in a straight line. A computer screen flickered to life, and a few moments later, the automated system deactivated the tubes, and a line of people came to life, stretching and blinking blearily at the flickering lights.

“They aren’t paying us enough for this, man,” groaned Fangs, shaking his head.

“Hey, I’m not complaining, I get paid to wake up to your ugly mug, baby,” said Kevin, stretching luxuriously.

“S’that a joke? You know I’m prettier than you, Keller.” Fangs looked over Betty to where Jughead was now sitting up, fluffing his hair. “Jug, you look just how I feel.”

Jughead scowled. He’d rather not have the others making fun of his appearance in front of Betty, who was still groggy but in _just a tank-top and underwear, who looks that good just coming out of hyper-sleep_? Jughead could feel that his hair was full of grease, standing up on top of his head, and longed for a shower. The sooner he could get away from the sight of a half-naked Betty Cooper, the better.

Sweet Pea was coughing out of the side of his bunk, having not bothered to follow the usual guidelines of avoiding a smoke in the ten minutes before hyper. The sergeant was already standing, strolling along the hyper-tubes as fresh as a daisy.

“Okay, Serpents, what are you waiting for?” FP Jones was chomping on gum, posture assertive, voice ringing in hyper-headche ears. “Listen up! You are looking at the new law in this end of the universe! Another glorious day in the Serpents. A day in the Serpents and it’s gonna be a day at the Farm! Every meal’s a banquet, boy, every paycheck a fortune! I love the Serpents like my own family!”

Jughead scowled even harder.

“Man, this floor is freezing!” said Sweet Pea, hopping on one foot. The sight of all six foot four of Sweet Pea hopping in his boxers was something to behold.

“You want me to get your slippers for you, Sweet Pea?” snapped FP irascibly.

“Sir, I’d love that,” said Sweet Pea frankly. FP shook his head at him, and ordered the Serpents to fall in.

Mantle strolled past Jughead, muttering that he hated this job. Jughead couldn’t help but agree, and made his way over to his locker, relishing the familiar comfort of his beanie. Toni, of course, was already doing pull-ups on one of the horizontal bars as Cheryl watched in loving adoration.

Betty Cooper staggered past, exhaustion written on her face. Jughead tried and failed completely not to watch her longingly, pulling his S t-shirt over his head and knocking his beanie askew.

“Baby,” he heard Toni say. “Who’s Ponytail?”

“She’s supposed to be some kind of consultant, TT.” Cheryl sounded dismissive. That was no real change from normal. “Apparently, Nightmare Smurfette over there saw an alien once.”

Jughead saw Betty freeze, out of the corner of his eye, and made a mental note to drive Cheryl and Toni fucking crazy as soon as he had the opportunity. What the fuck did _Nightmare Smurfette_ even mean?

“Whoop-de-fuckin-do,” said Sweet Pea. “Yo, Topaz, you ever been mistaken for a man?”

“  
Nah, SP.” Toni didn’t even pause her pull-up. “Have you?”

Fangs high-fived her, and jostled Sweet Pea companionably. Sweet Pea took the joke good-naturedly, which Jughead was glad for; the tallest serpent had a horrific temper, and Jughead dreaded having to discipline him as a newly promoted corporal.

“TT, you’re too bad,” said Cheryl appreciatively. Privately, Jughead agreed, although he thought that Cheryl might have meant it slightly differently from how he meant it. Betty continued dressing silently, but he noticed her shoulders hunching. He was going to give Cheryl and Toni absolute _shit_ throughout this mission.

The mess hall was Jughead’s favourite part of the _Whyte Wyrm_ , and he habitually indulged his never-ending hunger, despite how disgusting their rations sometimes were. Everyone else had limited amounts, but Jughead’s tray was piled high with the unrecognisable sludge that the food processor had served them. Betty only had one of the high-protein milkshakes. He didn’t blame her.

“Yo, boss,” Sweet Pea said, dropping his own tray on to the table opposite Mantle. “What’s the op?”

“It’s a rescue mission, you’ll love it,” said FP. “Some open-minded, free-loving colonists need us to come and rescue them from their cult.”

Most of the Serpents laughed. Jughead didn’t.

“Dumb-ass colonists,” said Mason, who was one of the few Earthers on the squad, a career marine from a family of career marines. It didn’t seem to occur to him that most of his squadmates, and his sergeant, were former colonists. Then again, Jughead and the other ex-colonists had got out of there as soon as possible, so maybe Mason had a point. Betty, sitting at the far end of the table with Lodge, St Clair and the lieutenant, looked disappointed.

“What’s this crap supposed to be?” asked Moore, throwing his food down after taking a mouthful.

“Cornbread, I think,” said Clayton, looking equally disgusted.

“It’s good for you, man, eat it,” said Jughead. “If you don’t want it, I will.”

Moore cheerfully handed his yellow spongey stuff over, and Jughead dipped it in some sort of spicy sauce before eating it. Sweet Pea and Reggie Mantle were discussing some adventure that they’d had on a colony near Arcturus, and Jughead wanted no part of that conversation.

“Hey, Andrews!” Sweet Pea shouted. Jughead sighed; Andrews was one of his favourite members of the crew, kind and harmless and always willing to help. He thought some of the others took advantage of Andrew’s nature, and it always made him uncomfortable, although FP seemed to have no problem with it and the others all thought it was great fun.

“What’s up, Sweet Pea?” Andrews bounded to their side of the table like an enthusiastic Labrador.

“Bro, do the thing, do the knife thing? C’mon, man, it’s awesome!”

Jughead watched with detached interest as Fangs grabbed Sweet Pea in a bear hug, and forced the bigger man’s hand under Archie’s. Archie took the knife, and prepared to stab it into the table. Betty was watching in utter astonished terror. The Lodge woman seemed to be whispering in her ear, an amused smile spread on her face. Had Betty never been on a ship with an artificial person before? That seemed odd, for a consultant on a mission of this type. Her eyes had gone wide with terror, and her face was flushed. Lodge was flushed too, although she was concentrating on Archie’s pleasantly regular features rather than Sweet Pea’s panicked yelling.

“Thanks, bro!” said Archie, once he was done, handing the switchblade back to Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea shoved Fangs angrily, telling he wasn’t funny. If Jughead wasn’t so used to these displays, he would have disagreed.

Doiley was pointedly ignoring the Serpents' behaviour at the far end of the table, schmoozing that corporate St Clair dickhead and paying little attention to Betty or Veronica Lodge.

“Guess the new lieutenant’s too good to eat with the rest of us grunts, huh?” he muttered to FP.

“Forget it, boy,” said the sergeant. “These types are always like that.”

Betty was astonished by the display.

“...How? How did you do that?” she gasped.

“Oh, B, of course you wouldn’t know!” said Veronica, curling an arm around Archie, who grinned at her. “I completely forgot; ships like this always have a synthetic on board.”

“They prefer the term ‘artificial person’, don’t they, Big Red?” said Nick. Betty got the impression he was mocking Archie. “Wouldn’t want to be politically incorrect, would we, Andrews?”

Andrews looked a little upset, before returning to his usual friendly expression. “We do, actually,” he said cheerfully. “I’m Archie Andrews, and I’m a synthetic person. I hope there’s not a problem, Betty?”

Betty stared at him in utter wonder for a moment. Andrews, the friendly crew member who had showed her how to work the food processing units, was an android? He was made of circuits and wires and machinery, instead of flesh and blood?

“Oh!” she said, after she’d been quiet for slightly too long. “No... No, of course not! I just... I’m so sorry for being rude, I just had no idea...”

“Betty is a little older than she looks,” said Veronica diplomatically. “B, it hadn’t even occurred to me how much further society has come in terms of artificial people since you were last outside of Earth’s orbit.”

“We’re _people_ ,” Archie said cheerfully. “We’re just... made of different stuff.”

“Of...” Betty paused, and thought about how she’d liked Archie’s unabashed friendliness and consideration for everyone around him, before continuing. “Of course you are, Archie. I’m so sorry for being so rude.”

“Forget it.” Archie shone a perfectly symmetrical set of teeth at her. “I already have.”

Nick, whose teeth looked nearly as expensive, gave Veronica and Archie a much nastier smile.

Down the table, Betty caught Jughead’s eye. He glanced down at his tray as soon as she saw him, but she thought she saw a smile across his face.

The briefing was held in the _Whyte Wyrm_ ’s main hangar. The Serpents were sprawled across various bits of machinery, to Doiley’s apparent disappointment. The sergeant, Jones, made a vague attempt to get the marines to look disciplined, but Betty thought his heart wasn’t in it. Doiley might have been a stickler to the rules, but the Serpents clearly knew what they were doing when it came to disrupting the young man’s authority. Betty, Veronica and Nick hung back.

“Morning, Marines- Serpents,” said Doiley, clearly resenting the nickname. Betty had already seen the pride that the Serpents took in their nickname, and thought Doiley should get over it, or his little power trip might not last very long. “I’m sorry we didn’t have time to brief you before we left Quiet Mercy, but-”

“Sir!”

The big rangy Serpent with the neck tattoo slung his hand into the air, glaring at Doiley.

“What is it, Jughead?”

“Sweet Pea, sir,” said the Serpent in question. “He’s Jughead.”

Jughead waved half-heartedly. He was still wearing the odd crown-shaped beanie that Betty had noticed in the mess earlier, too-long dark curls peeking out from underneath, scribbling in a notebook.

“Oh my God,” whispered Veronica, pulling Betty down to listening height. “What kind of guy doesn’t even know which of his soldiers is which?”

“Ju- Jughead’s a corporal, too,” replied Betty, equally quietly. “You’d think it was important to know who your third in command was.”

The Serpents did not look impressed. Cheryl was rolling her eyes expressively, while Toni’s posture exuded hostility.

“This gonna be a real-life fight, or another board game, sir? We gonna be sitting up here, or down in the mud, taking all the risks?” Sweet Pea looked increasingly resentful.

“All we know is that there’s still no contact with the Farm, and that a Xeno-morph may be involved.”

A _Xenomorph_ , Betty thought to herself. They’d named it. All the time that they’d been calling her insane, and someone had come up with a name for the creature from her nightmares. _Stranger-shape_.

“Scuse me, sir,” said Mantle. “A what?”

“A Xenomorph.”

“It’s some new creature, isn’t it?” said Jughead. “What exactly are we dealing with here? If it’s a new creature, surely we should go in knowing as much as possible.”

At least someone was listening.

“Miss Cooper,” said Dilton, backing away.

“Go on, B,” Betty heard Veronica whisper. “You’ve got this, girl.”

“I’ll tell you what I know.” Betty paused, and met Jughead’s eyes. He was gazing at her clearly, no trace of cynicism, and the idea of just one person, at long last, listening to her and taking her seriously, was enough to help her continue.

“...we set down on LV-426, and one of our crew members was brought back onboard with something attached to his face, some kind of parasite. We tried to get it off; it wouldn’t come off. Later it seemed to come by itself and die.” Betty could hear herself speeding up, panicking, but she didn’t seem to be able to stop it. “Jason seemed fine; we were all having dinner, and, um... it must have laid something inside his throat, some sort of embryo; he started... Um, he-”

“Look, man,” interrupted the soldier with long pink hair. “I only need to know one thing: where they are.”

The pink-haired girl stumbled forwards. A tiny bit of Betty wondered if Jughead had kicked her.

“Go on, Toni, kick ass, right?” said the one called Fangs.

“Yeah, Cheryl’s sorority are gonna give a Xenomorph a pillow fight,” drawled Sweet Pea. Cheryl openly kicked him much harder, and called him a Neanderthal.

“Are you finished?!” snapped Betty. She stepped closer to Toni, unused to the idea of trying to intimidate someone. “I hope you’re right. I really do.”

“Thank you, Miss Cooper,” said Doiley, stepping forwards to try to regain control over his unruly squad. “We also have Miss Cooper’s support on file; I suggest you study it-”

“One of those things managed to wipe out my entire fa- crew in less than twenty-four hours. If the Farm has found that ship, there’s no telling how many colonists have been exposed. What happened to Jason could happen again. Or, God forbid, something even worse. We can do better. We must do better. Do you understand?!”

There was silence for a moment.

Jughead hadn’t taken his eyes off her for a second. “

Anyway,” said Doiley, controlling his temper, “the report is on file, so look at it. Any questions?”

Sweet Pea raised one of his long arms.

“What is it, Private?”

“How do I get out of this chicken-shit outfit?” Sweet Pea grinned manically.

“That’s enough, Pea,” said Sergeant Jones. For once, Sweet Pea went quiet, though he was still smirking.

“B!” said Veronica. “I. Am. Obsessed. You are a bad-ass, girl! Did you see the way those Serpents looked at you? You are a queen!”

Betty smiled softly. As embarrassed as she was to admit it, one Serpent’s opinion already mattered a little more to her than the others, and Jughead hadn’t stopped listening to her for a moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah okay so it's time for a disclaimer: i don't really like toni or cheryl as they're written in the show. i wanted to like toni, but she was initially clearly wasted to create dramatic tension between an established couple, which is a super lazy device imo (feel free to disagree), set up to be unlikeable, and she was unnecessarily nasty to betty as soon as she met her. like, yeah, the whole southside/northside thing was meant to be tense, but betty was really trying to be friendly and honestly i really don't like it when people write women talking to women like that. toni resenting betty so much on sight was gratuitous and clearly there just to create drama, rather than decent characterisation, at the expense of her character, her sexuality, and her plotline. it's just not realistic to me tbh. 
> 
> then i liked toni a bit more when they ditched that plotline (good, it was fucking boring), but then like an episode later they reduced her to an accessory to cheryl and that's been her role ever since. cheryl has possibly the worst written plot arc on the show over time; she had such interesting development in series 1 and parts of 2, but it's got to the point where her main characteristics are 'loud and fighty' and 'gaslighting/stalking'. that's not healthy and they shouldn't be writing it as a fun romance, especially where the targets of her most creepy behaviour have both been black women? and we're meant to just write it off as 'oh Cheryl's so outrageous isn't she fun?' no, she WAS fun, now she's a dickhead who needs more than a single episode of therapy. she's manipulative and cruel and the show often manages to make that kind of boring.
> 
> again: please do not write women like that.
> 
> obviously all of this is my opinion and you don't have to agree with it.
> 
> anyway i liked this chapter because there was a good bit of time for bughead to stare longingly at one another. at some point i'm going to end up writing the more actiony stuff and you can't force as much bughead in there, so i'm dreading it tbh.


	7. An Express Elevator to Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The surface of LV-426 beckons. Betty doesn't want to feel useless; Jughead doesn't want to feel quite as enthralled by her. 
> 
> One of them gets their way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay the next couple of chapters are very Aliens heavy, i'll be honest, but we're getting somewhere. also jug PINES and he cannot cope.
> 
> also hello! i am finding it hard to write today! why are the riverdale writers all going out of their way to appear unpleasant! i would prefer not to watch their show because they deserve little money or accolades! give accolades only to the crew and cast who sometimes manage to make the poorly written mess watchable! give no time to those who appear to dislike characters with agency!

The last time Betty loads up a ship, she is with her siblings.

“When we blow the switches, how long before the ship blows?” she asks.

“Ten minutes,” says Charles. Charles is muted, obeying Betty’s instructions, instead of leading with his usual calm authority. He has just taken care of their father. Betty does not question why a fully grown man is listening to a seventeen-year-old anymore; she just wants to get them out of this, any way they can. Polly is not capable, although her hands are steady on the motion detector; Polly is completely silent in the face of her grief and fear. When this is over Betty will join her, she thinks. For now she is calm.

“We’re going to need coolant for the air support system,” she says, assessing their needs and their best chances of getting out of this mess alive. “You two go down and get all the coolant you can carry. I’ll get the shuttle ready. I’ll give you about seven minutes before I flip the switches and blow this fucker off into space.”

Charles gasps his acquiescence. Polly is still silent, but her face is steely. Betty thinks of saying _I love you_ , that she has never said it enough and that she should promise it now to all that’s left of their family. She doesn’t say it. It feels like saying something so final will jinx their chances, and they still have time once they get the coolant and get to the shuttle. She will say it then. She leaves the shipboard communicators on, and heads off.

The controls to release the _Register_ from the underbelly of the ship are simple. The codes to order the _Riverdale_ to self-destruct are not, and Betty tightens her ponytail to concentrate before she can face typing the commands in. As soon as she starts, a noise comes over the shipboard radio, and Betty soon finds herself in a desperate search for her cat, unwilling to let that creature claim another life. She pleads with her pet to come back, to get into the carrying case so that they can leave. She can hear her siblings doing sterling work over the intercom, the clank of coolant cylinders ringing throughout the ship.

The fucking cat will not come. Caramel is _her_ responsibility, Hal always said so, although Betty is now inclined to think that everything Hal ever said about responsibility and duty was fucking bullshit.

“Caramel!” she pleads.

“ _You’re doing great, Pol, check the bottles_ ,” says Charles’ disembodied voice.

“Caramel, please, we don’t have time for this!” It is the stupidest thing she has ever done. Polly and Charles have each other to protect them. Betty has gone off alone to look for her cat.

Caramel yowls, and Betty screams, thinking _this is it, I am dead_ , before she realises that Caramel has chosen this opportunity to scare the living daylights out of her, rather than the creature.

“Caramel!” she calls, crying in earnest now. “Goddammit!”

A second later she has her pet, clinging to the little cat like she can keep her alive through the force of her arms. Caramel miaows in protest as she is shoved unceremoniously into the carrying case, but Betty does not care. She has her cat, and she is going to activate the self-destruct, and no-one else in her family has to die today.

There is silence over the intercom, as the coolant cylinders stop falling.

“. _..get out of the way_ ,” Charles whispers. Polly is whimpering. “ _Get out of the way, Polly, it’s going to kill us_!”

* * *

“I don’t care if you are short, Sweets, get it done!”

Jughead could hear FP’s voice across the hangar. He had spent his whole life listening for that Earther drawl, at first awaiting excitedly, then cowering in fear, and then, years later, paying attention for orders.

He ignored FP – a privilege he had earned by making corporal last year – and continued to read Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Cooper’s report.

He’d had no real idea who she was when she stepped aboard. She was a pretty girl, and nothing about her polite, friendly, guarded personality had put him off; but it had taken until now, awake after hyper-sleep on the _Whyte Wyrm_ , to understand a little more about her.

It just made him like her more.

Fuck, she was both terrifyingly old and horrifyingly young. He’d read about the woman rescued from a hyper-sleep that beat all previous records, of course; anyone in contact with Earth media knew about that, and that meant all of humanity, even spread across the stars as they now were. Nothing about ‘sweet Betty’, as Cheryl had already dismissively called her (apparently having ignored Betty’s cool outburst at the briefing) suggested that such a kind girl had gone through so much trauma.

She _was_ sweet, though. Jughead was still trying to keep his distance from her, while the Serpents prepared for the combat drop to the planet. Developing an infatuation with one of the people he was supposed to protect was unprofessional, but more importantly, it would put Betty and the others in danger if he couldn’t think straight around her. But he had paid attention to her briefing, and he’d certainly paid attention to her in the mess hall.

Archie might be artificial, but the operative term to describe Archie was _person;_ Jughead had met synths who did the bare minimum to ensure that they fulfilled the three Asimovian laws of robotics, whose programming allowed them to interact with humans with the bare minimum of socialisation. Hell, he’d even heard of synths in the early days who hadn’t had that basic programming to preserve life wherever possible, who’d gone terribly wrong and tried to hurt people.

Archie was nothing like that. Sometimes, he thought Archie might be his best friend on missions; always happy to help, to ignore Jughead’s periodic lapses into monosyllabic misanthropy, always happy to feed Jughead junk food when he felt the need, and yet somehow willing to offer advice that went beyond ‘suggesting the best simulated outcome’ to ‘calling Jughead on his bullshit’.

Jughead had even met the man who programmed Archie, and others in the same series. Fred Andrews, who’d named the Archie unit his own son, and done the same for other artificial persons who were Archie’s _siblings,_ had been one of the best men Jughead had ever met. Fred had wanted Archie and others like him to be a positive force for all conscious beings, and that had included his son, no less beloved because he was made of complex machinery than if he was made of Fred’s flesh and blood. How could one not extend the same feelings towards Archie that Fred had shown, once you saw how Archie genuinely, absolutely, loved Fred too?

Anyway, Jughead had watched how Betty interacted with Archie closely. Betty’s reaction to Archie’s status as an artificial person, because she had been born long before such developed artificial people existed, endeared her even more to Jughead. Yes, she had been confused, and failed to grasp what was going on; but she had looked at Archie, and seen a person, Jughead’s friend, and tried her best. Jughead appreciated her more for it.

Fuck, how could he appreciate her more than he already did? He had read and re-read every inch of her report. He understood why she was a little guarded now, even around Veronica. Jughead had softened towards Veronica a little, after seeing how she supported Betty.

The report was insane, but the writing was clear, succinct yet detailed, bizarre yet logical. He yearned for such reports when he was trying to plan a campaign.

God, what a thing for someone younger than him to go through, even if she was legally four times his age.

Once he couldn’t justify reading her words any more, nor re-watching the brief clip of Betty, defiant at her tribunal, he clambered back to his feet, away from his viewing screen, and over towards FP.

“Did you check the number three, boy?” asked FP, chewing his gum. Jughead rolled his eyes – yes, he’d carried out his duties before doing something as _actually_ important as checking the consultant’s report. “Lemme see that.”

“Hi, Sergeant Jones, it’s nice to meet you officially!” said a bright voice. “I didn’t mean to ambush you.” Expressive hands made a brief calming gesture. “Is there anything I can do around here? I kind of feel like a fifth wheel, and... I’d like to be useful!”

It was Betty – of course it was Betty – clad in her practical dungarees and t-shirt, a stark contrast to Veronica’s skirt and heels and St Clair’s designer outdoors gear. She was smiling shyly at FP, waiting for orders, and waiting to be useful. Jughead thought a few moments ago that he could not appreciate more, but now, why? He thought he might be even more infatuated with her personality than her appearance.

“I don’t know, Miss Cooper, is there anything you can do?” FP responded immediately. To give FP credit, as much as he could be an asshole, he had never been one to turn people down based on who they were. FP was much more likely to let people, down, based on who he himself was.

A defiant, delighted smile threatened to make itself known on Betty’s face. Jughead wondered if it had been a while since anyone had _asked_ her what she could do, rather than _telling_ her what she couldn’t.

“Well, I can drive and maintain that loader,” Betty said nonchalantly. “I have a Class Two rating.”

“Be my guest.” FP chewed his gum. Again, it was something that the other Serpents, and even Jughead, appreciated periodically: FP was prepared to be impressed by people like them, instead of expecting them to fail. For some reason, that sympathy extended to Betty Cooper.

Betty clambered nimbly up into the power loader, strapping herself in and executing the load-up sequence without hesitation. She activated the arms, briefly demonstrating her competence with the controls, and walked forwards to heft one of the serious ammo containers into the air, before pausing for FP’s approval.

“Where’d’you want it?” she called, satisfied.

“Betty,” breathed Jughead, delighted.

“Betty?” FP mocked quietly. “Who’s _Betty?”_ He laughed, and nodded appreciatively at Betty, ignoring Jughead’s ridiculous adoring gaze. “Bay 12, please, Miss Cooper.”

Betty watched quietly, unwilling to interrupt, as the Serpents started to load up and get ready for the drop. She had already shown off enough earlier, her desire to both impress the Serpents’ real leader (what the hell did Doiley think he was doing?) and one Serpent in particular making her unusually assertive. Or maybe that was Betty now, willing to tell people _no, I’m here, listen to me_ , now Alice wasn’t around to tell her that it was unladylike or unwelcome.

God, she missed her mom sometimes.

Mason, the one nicknamed ‘Moose’, was systematically stripping and checking his gun. Toni and Fangs were carrying much larger guns, seemingly strapped to a harness. On Toni, who was the smallest of all the Serpents, Betty had worried a little that the gun would be top-heavy and drag her down; but a moment later she felt guilty for her doubts, seeing how well Toni could handle it.

Cheryl, too, despite being as spoiled as Veronica, had completed a run in the practice range with an effortless full score.

“I never miss unless I mean to, Sweet Betty,” she said, shouldering her rifle. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m the only one qualified to handle the dropship with anything resembling expertise.” She sauntered off to the ship, where the Serpent nicknamed Mad Dog was ready in the co-pilot’s seat. Mad Dog was the only one of the Serpents who seemed to truly dislike his nickname, and Betty had heard Archie call him ‘Munroe’. Speaking of Archie, he was already driving the APC aboard, Veronica shadowing his every move. She’d confessed a certain fascination with his guileless pleasantness to Betty.

“I’m so used to people having an agenda, in our line of business,” she’d said, watching Archie concentrate on driving. “Everyone always has _une motive ulterieure_. It’s refreshing to meet someone who can’t possibly have that. Not an innocent; he understands too much for that. But his aim is always to do the right thing, for as many people as possible. It’s hard to find that in my world.”

Betty couldn’t have agreed more. It was why she was watching the Serpents, rather than Archie.

“...we’re a team, and there’s nothing to worry about,” FP was saying, like a teacher watching over his flock. “It’s been a wild ride, good times, bad times, but throughout it all, the Serpents stick by each other’s sides, when even our own families might turn their backs on us.”

Jughead seemed to be slapping the straps on his shin armour with excess vigour at that part of the speech.

“We gonna come here, and we gonna conquer, and we gonna take some, is that understood? That’s what we’re gonna do, sweethearts. Gonna go and get some.”

Jughead grabbed his helmet. Around the brim, Betty could see the same crown pattern stencilled that she had seen on his strange grey beanie earlier.

“All right people, what is the first law?!”

“A Serpent never shows cowardice!” all the Serpents roared in unison, shocking Betty out of her pre-drop calm.

“What is the second law?!”

Betty met Lieutenant Doiley’s eyes. He looked pained; uncomfortable with his squad’s pre-combat ritual, but unwilling to disrupt it. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Jughead, caught up in the moment.

“...What is the fourth law?!”

“No Serpent left for dead!”

“What is the fifth law?!”

“A Serpent never betrays its own!”

“What is the sixth?!”

“In unity, there is strength!”

“In unity, there is strength!”

Abruptly, the Serpents started leaping to their feet, slamming their remaining gear on, and grabbing their guns. Betty realised belatedly that the weird, embarrassing chant was the last ritual before they were due to board the dropship, and scrambled to her feet, darting out of the door before it was blocked by a wall of Serpents.

Jughead was already outside, consulting quietly with Archie and Veronica. Nick St Clair was hanging around near them, looking like a spare prick at a wedding. FP jogged up to them, continuing his chant about unity, before he paused in front of his patiently waiting team.

“Absolutely bad-asses, Serpents! C’mon, let’s pack em in!” The older Serpent hauled the APC door open, and started pushing his squad inside, starting by manhandling Jughead in. Betty, Veronica and Nick followed more calmly, making their way to the remaining empty seats.

“It’s not exactly the Orient Express, but I guess it’ll do,” Veronica muttered, making Betty grin. The heiress gestured rudely at Doiley, swinging around in his mobile command centre, and ignored Nick completely. Nick went to sit on his own, on the opposite side of the APC.

“Lock em in, Sweet Pea,” FP called. Sweet Pea was still standing in the centre of the seats, locking down the restraints and yelling that he was ready to get it _on._ Betty chanced a glance at Jughead, and saw that he was looking at her too. At least he was trying to be subtle about it.

Archie activated the APC, and drove them into the dropship. Veronica blanched, and gripped the restraints at the jerking motion of the vehicle. Of course, Veronica had never dealt with such an inelegant vehicle; had never landed the ships of sixty-odd years ago in a storm. Still, Betty thought, Veronica looked excited, and was coping gamely with something that was far beyond her realm of experience.

Jughead was still pretending not to gaze at Betty.

Cheryl’s languid commands were echoing through the ship. If anything was going to make Betty more confident in their protectors, it was the sheer boredom with which Cheryl faced piloting through a complicated drop that, fifty-seven years ago, had damaged Betty’s much more powerful ship, during a much calmer landing.

Betty looked up again, and this time caught Jughead’s eye. He didn’t look at all ashamed to have been caught staring, and his lips twitched with a hint of a supportive smile. Betty looked down, but she supposed her own might have done the same, and Jughead might have caught _her_ doing it. Maybe he thought she was completely out of place here, a liability to his team. She hoped she could prove him wrong.

“We’re on an express elevator to hell!” roared Sweet Pea. “Going down!”

The ship dropped.

Veronica grabbed Betty’s hand, and Betty was glad of the distraction. Sweet Pea and Fangs were both cheering, and Cheryl drawled something about rough air ahead, although apparently she could handle it.

“That’s my baby,” said Toni helpfully.

“How many drops is this for you, Lieutenant?” called Betty. She had noticed his hands, curled around the arms of his seat painfully. This was a sensation she was well familiar with, and thought that a distraction might be welcome.

“38,” replied Doiley, his tone strangled. “Simulated.”

“How many combat drops?” asked Toni, flashing Betty an unusually inclusive smile. Betty grinned back, delighted to interact with the fearsome girl.

“Uh, two,” came the reply. “...Including this one.”

“Shit,” said Fangs.

“Oh, man,” said Sweet Pea.

“Oh my God, I can’t breathe,” gasped Veronica. Betty clutched her hand harder. In the seats across from them, apparently able to draw his attention away from Betty at long last, Jughead was calmly consuming ration bar after ration bar.

The ship continued to pick up speed, although the angle of descent seemed to gentle, and Cheryl’s voice on the intercom sounded even more bored, as she announced their turn into the final approach.

“I’m telling you, man, I got a bad feeling about this drop,” said Moose.

“You always say that, bro,” said Mantle.

“Well, I’ll call your folks when we get back without you, bro.”

“No thanks, bro,” replied Mantle sharply. The wind howled outside, and the turbulence seemed to settle into a more stable pattern. Doiley, now apparently calmed enough from his panic to start re-asserting his authority, started going through the routines of checking the squad’s cameras, as FP watched calmly over Doiley’s shoulder.

“Hey, Miss Lodge, Cooper,” said Sweet Pea, coming to loom over them. “Me and my squad of ultimate badasses will protect you! Check this out!”

He started reeling off a list of armaments that Betty zoned out of, although his enthusiasm was endearing, if annoying. Some of the Serpents were cheering him on, although Betty noticed that some of the calmer ones, like Keller and Jughead, seemed unimpressed. Veronica was leaning forwards eagerly, absorbed by Sweet Pea’s description. Well, Betty supposed he was very tall, and quite good-looking.

“... we got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks, we know how to build a pipe bomb!”

“Knock it off, Sweet Pea,” said FP sternly. “All right, gear up, people, we’ve got two minutes, get hot! Jughead, boy, you better not still be eating!”

Jughead ostentatiously returned his current ration bar to a pocket.

Betty scrambled to her feet, edging forwards to look at the screens in the command centre. Ahead of them, a pyramidal shape appeared out of the mist, shrouded in fog.

“That’s the atmosphere processor, B,” said Veronica proudly. “Remarkable piece of machinery, completely automated. My grandfather started the manufacture of them decades ago, by the way.”

St Clair snorted.

The atmosphere processor seemed to have a central dome and spire, and the pyramidal shape resolved itself into four large panels, slightly separate from the main dome. Betty was fascinated, and resolved to either ask Veronica how it worked, or look up the process in more detail for herself, once they were out of there.

“Okay, Blossom, take us low over the Farm complex, I want to take a look at it before we go in. Give me a slow circle of the complex,” ordered Doiley.

“Roger that,” said Cheryl, and the dropship drifted gently over the main buildings of the Farm. The storm shutters were sealed, and there were no signs of life. The exterior lights to guide incoming ships were still twinkling, so there was still some power, presumably running from the automated systems in the atmosphere processor.

“Structure seems intact,” Betty pointed out. “They still have power.”

Doiley nodded, and ordered Cheryl to land the ship. The ship picked up speed – Betty’s ears gave one last pop – and with the gentlest of jerks, they were down.

“Down and clear,” said Cheryl, and Archie raised the controls of the APC, lurching them out on to the surface of the planet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> couldn't resist making that stupid serpent chant the marines' pep talk
> 
> did anyone else get constant secondhand embarrassment from the serpents? i did. almost everything that happened was so overdramatic and daft, from the chant, to the gauntlet, to the laws and shit, to making a sixteen-year-old 'king', to making TEENAGE GIRLS POLEDANCE?
> 
> they never decided what the serpents really were, and then they just kind of... ditched the concept? also sweet pea disappeared for most of this series, even though he was a marginally more fleshed out serpent than the others? and i mean marginal. i kept watching his scenes to get an idea of his character, and all i got was 'angry' 'shouts often' 'please let him have more sweet interactions, jordan is handsome and good at more than one thing'. like, i don't miss the serpents much but at least write them out or sth, don't just drop the whole plotline.
> 
> or, like, drop it back in 2x04 before you used it for drama and lost half your audience
> 
> yeah okay also in case you think the constant jughead staring is a bit much: i went back and watched this scene and that's legit how much the film has hicks stare at ripley, the stoic marine guy is TRANSFIXED and the romance in the film is subtle and hella cute. more subtle admiration of each other's competence as film romance pls. they are the only two competent people in the entire Alien franchise. let them appreciate each other's character. and make out.
> 
> anyway i saw that and was like 'imagine bughead but in space' and that's why any of this happened.


	8. The Farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty, Jughead and the Serpents make their way into the Farm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so we're getting there  
> jughead is not having the best day of his life  
> betty isn't either  
> it's only going to get worse

Alice storms to the _Riverdale’s_ tiny armoury, her hands shaking as she keys in a code she had been issued with and never used. All deep space missions were issued a small number of firearms, to be used in the event of an emergency; Alice has never used them, and had hoped never to use them.

“Mom!” Betty runs after her, tears impeding her vision, skittering down darkened corridors that aren’t yet re-lit after the landing repairs. “Mom, you can’t use those!”

Alice is shaking, her own tears trailing mascara down her face, hands trembling as she finishes the pass code.

“That bastard,” she gulps, “That bastard killed Jason! I want it dead and I want it off my ship!”

“Mom,” says Betty, panicking harder, “Remember what happened when we cut it?! Mom, please, it bled acid, it’ll bleed through the hull and then we’ll all be killed!”

Alice stops, gasps a final sob, and then slumps on to the ground. Betty drops to her knees in front of her.

“My babies,” Alice gasps. “My babies, what have I done to you and your brother and your sister?”

In the dark, they huddle together, Betty unsure who needs the comfort more. She thinks Charles and Chic will be clinging together the same way, holding each other close against the bleakness of their situation. Polly is alone – bereft, unmoored, incoherent in her grief for the lover she saw ripped apart in front of her. Jason’s blood is still on their clothes.

The creature’s blood means that they cannot shoot it.

On the worktable, they have gathered together what they think might help them to capture the little bastard. Chic, in particular, has an idea.

“It’s basically a cattle prod,” he says, waving the metal prod in front of him. “It’s insulated all the way here, up to here, just make sure no-body puts their hand on the end of it.”

He taps the end on the ceiling. Sparks fly, and the crew jumps, apart from Polly, who just gazes at the prod listlessly.

“It shouldn’t damage the little bastard, unless its skin’s thinner than hours,” says Chic. “But it will give him a little... incentive.”

“Now we just have to find him,” says Polly dully.

“I’ve taken care of that, honey,” Hal responds. “I’ve designed this tracking device. You just set it to search for a moving object, and when something’s in range, it’ll start to give off a signal.”

“What’s it key off, Dad?” asks Betty. Hal looks weary.

“Micro-changes in air density, Betty.”

Alice asks for a demonstration, and then separates them into two teams. Their parents take Polly with them, and Betty hopes that they might somehow be able to comfort their bereaved daughter, although neither Alice nor Hal are really prepared for this situation. Alice orders Charles to avoid any heroics, and to stay in contact at all times. Betty is not sure that Charles will listen; at the time, she is not sure she wants Charles to listen.

Betty, Chic and Charles creep down to Twelve Module, Betty brandishing the torch and tracking device ahead of her as they make their way through the darkened corridors of the ship.

“I thought you guys fixed Twelve Module,” she hears her voice echo ahead of them, sounding more critical than she intended.

“We did,” replies Chic, sounding confused rather than affronted. Now is not the time for bickering. “I don’t understand it.”

“The circuits must’ve burned out,” says Charles calmly, and pauses to check the control panel. It is odd; the two of them are a good enough pair of mechanics that their repairs rarely burn themselves out like this, and Charles seems confused by what has happened and how they are going to deal with it. He and Chic pause to look at the circuits more closely.

Betty carries on into the next section of the module, still waving the detector around. As the lights flicker back on, the electronic whirring of the detector starts up.

In the next room, the detector is louder. Something is within five metres, hiding in a storage locker. Charles holds the net; Chic brandishes the cattle prod. Slowly, they creep nearer to the locker, ready to get a better look at the creature that grew inside Jason and tore him up from within. As Betty nods, Charles curls his fingers around the storage locker, and yanks.

Caramel yowls, and streaks out of the locker in a blur of orange fur.

“Wait, wait, don’t let her go!” yelps Betty, as Charles shouts “What the hell are you doing, baby?!” but it is too late, and Chic has dropped the net.

“It’s just your stupid cat, Betty,” he says, staring at the Cooper siblings in confusion. Charles laughs, and rubs his forehead.

“Chic, we had to bag it,” he says, still maintaining that calm that none of the other Coopers seem to be able to grasp. “Now we might pick her up on the tracker again.”

“Oh,” said Chic. “I’ll- I’ll go and get it.”

Charles sends Chic off on his own, and shares a nervous laugh with Betty.

Soon Polly will not be the only Cooper sibling to have lost their lover.

Soon trackers, nets and cattle prods will be utterly useless.

* * *

It was pouring with rain.

Half a century earlier, when Betty had first visited LV-426, her father had described the atmosphere as ‘almost primordial’. Then the air had been unbreathable, and impossible to see through, further a couple of feet. Her mother, sister and Jason had clambered out in their bulky exosuits, making their way across impossible terrain. Now the air was thin, but breathable; the rain cascading from the sky was almost indistinguishable from a miserable H2O downpour on Earth.

Both squads of Serpents had gone ahead, clearing a safe path into the Farm complex for the civilians. Betty had watched through the headcams in the command centre, Veronica next to her, Nick ignoring the whole process, as the Serpents had moved professionally through the rain, bypassed the door security, and made their way inside.

The main door had ‘THE FARM’ plastered above it in big, friendly lettering, with a set of colourful figures holding hands underneath. Where in many other colonies you would have expected to see a sign for a bar, there was a sign saying ‘Where the one become many, and the many become one!’

“Oh my God,” muttered Veronica. “It’s like Scientology, in space. Which, I mean I guess it was kind of in space anyway, but you take my point.”

Betty nodded. She wondered what the kind of people who had moved here were like, if they’d found themselves dissatisfied with their lives on Earth, and come out here looking for some kind of meaning.

She wondered if they’d found it, or just found death, waiting for them in the darkness.

On Toni’s helmet cam, Jughead and FP braced themselves against each side of the doors, and hauled them open. There was a distinct similarity of features between them, Betty noticed. Perhaps she was imagining it, or if life among the Serpents eventually moulded people into the same shape, and Jughead was just at an earlier step in the path that FP had been following.

The camera moved, as Toni ventured forwards into the complex.

The Farm looked nothing like its namesake. All Jughead could see so far was the same metal walkway that he had seen on dozens of the LGC colonies, but in a far worse state than any he’d seen. As a child growing up on Southside, he must have walked a colony with identical dimensions thousands of times; but Southside’s main entrance had never been dripping with water from holes ripped in the ceiling, and the piping and insulation were always well- if cheaply-maintained, not hanging from the roof in tattered clumps.

They were on the upper level, scanning the floor above Toni and FP’s team. Fangs was on point, and Jughead was grateful to have Kevin with him. Kevin was a lot less volatile than some of the other Serpents, and a very useful person to have around if an op went wrong. He was also a calming influence on Fangs.

“ _Sir, you copying this?”_ said FP’s voice in his ear. “ _Looks like hits from small-arms fire_.”

“Alright, Jughead, Sweet Pea, use your motion trackers.”

Jughead would’ve thought, after reading Betty’s report, that they shouldn’t have even entered the Farm without using their motion trackers. At least it had occurred to Doiley eventually.

The motion detectors thudded rhythmically, showing Jughead nothing but himself and the other Serpents. A colony the size of the Farm’s should have been swarming with people; humans, and the other Earth species they inevitably brought with them.

“Nothing,” he said. “Not a thing. Keller, Mantle, you’re up.”

Kevin and Reggie split off into another room. Jughead and Fangs entered what looked like an office, papers still strewn across the desks and coffee sitting cold in cups. A long time ago, Jughead had read a story about the _Mary Celeste_ , an old Earth sailing ship that was found abandoned at sea, and he thought of it now. The desks looked as if their occupants had left briefly, and would return to file their papers and finish their drinks at any moment.

Instead, the room was cold, and the storm shutters were broken. Rain blew in from the storm outside, and Jughead shivered, wondering what had happened to the people who’d left this room so abruptly and never returned. In one room, there were piles of clothes on the floor, dropped there as if their inhabitants had disappeared in an instant.

Below him, he heard the sound of Sweet Pea’s tracker picking up speed.

The images on the screen were blurry. In Toni’s camera, Betty could see Sweet Pea, pointing into one of the cabins and whispering _it’s right in there_. On the half-open door behind him, she thought she could see a hand print.

The image of Toni in Sweet Pea’s cam looked grim, but calm. The two Serpents edged into the room, the long barrel of Toni’s gun always ahead of them. The tracker sounded higher and higher, closer and closer to the source of the movement.

Sweet Pea roared, and kicked down the door, Toni leaping through a moment later, ready to face down any kind of monster.

On the table in front of them was a snake, slithering peacefully around inside its terrarium. It looked up at the intruders, hissed gently, and carried on with its business of basking in the light.

“ _Good one, Pea_ ,” Betty heard Toni say. “ _Sir, that’s a negative situation here_.”

Doiley sighed.

“Wait!” said Betty. “Wait, tell him to-” she grabbed a second headpiece from the command desk, jamming it over her head. “Jughead, back up, pan right.”

Jughead’s camera obeyed instantly. On the floor of the secondary deck was a shape she recognised from the Riverdale, repeated several times over: the pitting and melting that she remembered from the first creature’s blood. It had gone clean through the floor, just as it had in the medical lab, when her father and mother had tried to cut the creature off Jason’s face.

_“You seeing this alright? It looks melted.”_ From the lack of response, Betty wasn’t sure that anyone had paid that part of her report any attention _. “Looks like someone bagged one of Be- Miss Cooper’s bad guys here.”_

“Acid for blood.” Veronica’s voice was triumphant. “That’ll show my goddamned company who’s delusional. It’s just like you said, B.”

“ _Oh, is that it_?” Sweet Pea, too sounded pleased with himself. “ _If you liked that, you’re gonna love this, people_.”

Sweet Pea and Toni’s cameras both panned upwards, showing the same gaping hole in the secondary level’s deck, and the lights of Jughead and Fangs’ cameras showing through. Sweet Pea panned down again, and Betty heard the distinct sound of snorting, and then spitting, as Sweet Pea showed the same hole, repeated through floor after floor below them.

“ _Second squad, what’s your status_?” asked FP.

“ _We’ve finished our sweep. Nobody’s home_.”

“Alright, the area’s secured. Let’s go in and see what their computer can tell us.” Doiley put his headset down, and stood up smartly.

“What are you talking about? The area’s not secured!” said Betty, dropping her own headset. “You haven’t-”

“It’s secured, Cooper. Sweet Pea, I want the CPU online. Jughead, meet us by the main door.” Doiley marched off, clearly unwilling to listen to Betty’s protests.

“What a funny little man,” said Veronica, her lip curling in disapproval. “Honestly, why someone like that was put in charge of an operation like this is beyond me.”

“It’s all for the best, babe, he knows what he’s doing,” said Nick. Honestly, Betty had forgotten that St Clair was with them. He had contributed nothing since arriving on the _Whyte Wyrm_ , and seemed to spend most of his time giving the Serpents back-handed compliments, or carefully insulting Archie, who was too sweet to know why.

The door to the APC opened, bringing with it the storm. Betty followed Nick and Veronica outside, the former huddling into his expensive gilet against the storm.

It was the first time Betty had stood on the ground of a planet in more than half a century, and the mud under her feet could have been the same gravelly sludge to be found in quarries or rough ground across the galaxy. She was glad she had only brought sensible ankle boots, although Veronica seemed to be coping admirably for someone who had worn high-heeled boots and her third-best cape on a rescue mission. Betty’s own dungarees were a little more practical, although she was bare-headed in the hoodless plum bomber jacket she had found for the occasion. The rain cascaded down her face, but she welcomed it.

Outside the door, she paused, and waited for a moment. She wasn’t sure she was ready to do this; to see the destruction the creature had wrought on the Riverdale, repeated hundreds of times over among unsuspecting cult members. For a second, she longed to just stay there in the storm, breathing the thin air and feeling the rain on her skin.

“Are you alright?” a voice asked. Jughead had waited, rain dripping from the brim of his crown helmet, for her to be okay. He stepped further out of the shelter of the complex. “Hey... don’t judge an abandoned cult stronghold by its facade, right?”

He tried to give her a grin, his own face pale. Betty took a deep breath, tightened her ponytail, and stepped inside. The doors closed behind them.

Inside, the Serpents were discussing their interpretation of events before the Farm was abandoned.

“...no bodies. Must’ve been a hell of a fight,” Fangs was saying.

“Yeah,” said Jughead, still behind Betty. “Looks that way.” His voice was bleak. “This was my childhood home,” he said, surprising Betty. “Or... I grew up in a place just like this. They’ve destroyed it. How the hell did it get like this?”

“I’m sorry, Jughead.” Betty resisted the urge to put a comforting hand on his arm. “I... I know how hard it is.”

“No, I’m sorry,” said Jughead. “I’m projecting. This happened to you for real. Your report, it was... I’m so sorry, Betty.”

They stood there for a moment, caught in the grief that the others didn’t seem to understand yet.

“Jughead!” Fangs’ shout startled them both. “We’re going through the med-lab to operations!”

The med-lab was in a slightly better state, with most of the equipment, windows and lighting intact. Fangs led the way again, with Nick and Doiley close behind him. Veronica had made the fairly sensible decision to stick with Archie, negotiating the wreckage in her ridiculous shoes with the kind of elegance Betty was familiar with.

Three metre-high stasis tubes stood in one anteroom. Dread trickled down Betty’s spine, as she saw something else she was familiar with. Spiny fingers like a human hand gone terribly wrong curled around that familiar vertebrae scorpion tail, and she thought of that _thing_ wound protectively around Jason’s neck. She stepped nearer despite herself. Her eyes were fixed on the tubes.

“Lieutenant,” said Jughead, still behind her. “Doiley!”

Betty flinched, as Jughead carefully moved her out of the doorway, and stepped in first. He was transfixed by the creatures, recognising them from Betty’s description of the creature that came aboard the _Riverdale._ Her description had been hard to picture – how could it not be, when the creature was so patently _alien_ – but he saw what she had meant, and he, supposedly a big bad Serpent, was beyond glad that the creatures were behind thick glass.

“God, B,” said Veronica. “They’re real. I never thought – I mean-”

“It’s okay, V,” said Betty quietly. “If it helps, I never wanted you to have to see proof like this.”

Nick St Clair had got too close to the tubes, and he leapt back as one of the creatures moved suddenly. There was a disconcerting familiarity to its anatomy; like Jughead kept seeing human organs, but twisted, uncanny. Nick looked terrified.

“Looks like love at first sight to me,” said Jughead, unable to keep a clever comment from tumbling out of his mouth. The corporate representative looked appalled at him.

“I think he likes you, bro,” said Archie calmly, watching the creature’s appendage follow Nick’s movements. “Two are alive, sir, the rest are dead.”

Jughead ignored Archie reeling off the rest of the lab’s data to Veronica and Doiley, and went back to stand by Betty, who was rigid with discomfort, curling her hands into the pink fur of her jacket.

“Yo, Jug,” called Mantle. “I think we got something here.”

The tracker was rising in pitch. Something was moving in the complex.

“It’s behind us,” said Jughead.

“One of us?” asked Betty. Doiley checked with FP. The other squad was all in Operations.

Instantly, the Serpents snapped to action, encircling Betty, Nick and Veronica. Fangs whirled around, his over-sized rifle at the front of the squad as they moved back towards the main corridor.

Betty jumped, as Doiley knocked a can off the table. The other Serpents looked back at them, and elected to ignore their useless commanding officer. Veronica exchanged a glare with Betty.

“It’s coming straight for us,” said Mantle, eyes flickering between the tracker and the complex ahead of them. The group edged forwards, back into the main passageway of D block. Jughead crept out to cover the corridor, before Fangs swung out, guarding the bulk of the group.

The tracker continued to beep, louder and louder.

Something darted across the corridor. Jughead reacted a split-second faster than Fangs, smacking his own gun up into the big rifle, and directing the line of fire away from Fangs’ target. Fangs dropped the gun, and shot Jughead a look of pure enmity.

“What the hell, Jones?!” he spat.

“Stop it, Fangs.” Jughead looked back into the group, and gestured at Betty to come over. Betty inched forwards, following Jughead into a crouch, peering into the ducts behind the piping.

Curled up in the small space was a little girl. Her hair was matted and filthy, although a red bow still clung defiantly to a ragged lock. She could only have been ten or so, although it was hard to tell under the dirt. Her hands clutched a disintegrating toy dog, whose ears dangled by threads, and whose beady eyes had seen better days.

A broad grin spread across Jughead’s face, as he tried to soothe the little urchin, and reach for her hand. A set of white teeth flashed in the darkness, and Jughead withdrew his hand with a yelp.

“Please, don’t go! Where’d she go-”

“She’s under the grill!”

“Mantle, get your light up here-”

“Grab her, B, we’re gonna lose her!”

“Here, Betty!”

“No, Archie, keep back, you’ll scare her – dammit!”

The little girl had darted under the passageway’s plating and into one of the ventilation ducts. Without a second thought, Betty chased after her, hoping that her shoulders were small enough to let her crawl into the same kind of spaces as a ten-year-old. The girl had pushed some kind of grille between herself and Betty, but Betty whipped a hairpin out and had the grille unlocked within seconds, hauling herself into the bigger space beyond.

It was some kind of airway maintenance space, cramped and dirty, but big enough for the girl to stretch out comfortably and sleep. Betty glanced around the place in horror, wondering how long it was since the girl had been staying on her own in there. Bedding and food packaging covered the flooring, and the girl was pressed up into one corner, hyperventilating, her eyes wide and barely seeing Betty.

“It’s okay,” breathed Betty. “It’s alright. Don’t be afraid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wasn't going to not make it jellybean, okay? there's literally only one small girl in all of riverdale and apparently i have a desperate need to make betty and jb friends. 
> 
> also i'm finding it really hard to write this; the last couple of days, the writers have almost been going out of their way to seem unpleasant (i'm not talking about their trolling; that's their job, even though it's obnoxious and kind of boring), and i'm feeling uncomfortable writing anything based on the canon that they've worked on. 
> 
> kinda think the cast need to get the fuck out of there before they exploit and are horrible to them even more, tbh


	9. The Atmosphere Processor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty makes an unlikely new acquaintance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can't believe i wasn't originally going to have jb as newt. what a fool.
> 
> anyway this is a pretty serpent heavy chapter without that much bughead, so i'm sorry for that guys, if it helps i had way less fun writing it

“One last meal before bedtime, kids, I’m buying,” says Alice. Her children are delighted, traipsing after her into the mess. Polly is draped over Jason, elated that her boyfriend is alive and unharmed. Jason looks none the worse for wear, after his misadventure. A little pale, maybe, but Jason is a redhead who has spent several months in space, and all the UV and vitamin D capsules their health insurance provides cannot make him anything other than porcelain.

  
Alice cooks up a feast, or at least the shipboard equivalent. They have no cooking facilities, or anything other than warmable high-protein rations; but she has laid the whole range out on the table, with more than enough for all of them to have some. Betty has never seen such a feast aboard the _Riverdale,_ but the nervousness from earlier has left her queasy, and she cannot stomach much more than cold cereal, for now. Chic is digging in to a pile of re-heated chocolate chip pancakes with great gusto, while Jason helps himself to something that looks a bit like coleslaw. 

  
The room is filled with cheeriness and chatter, something which has been absent from the ship since they landed on LV-426, and Alice presides over them all like a matriarch throwing a formal dinner, correcting Betty’s posture, and even resisting her usual urge to snap at Hal. Hal, meanwhile, is grinning, although he rarely looks away from Jason. Betty understands why; it will be the medical officer’s responsibility if poor Jason gets some kind of illness from his unpleasant experience, and takes it back to Earth.

  
Charles, predictably, is flirting enthusiastically with Chic, while Polly pretends to be disgusted. It is a very familiar routine, until Jason starts to cough.

  
“What’s the matter, Jase?” asks Charles, grin still bright on his face. “The food’s not that bad, is it?”

  
Jason chokes.

  
“What’s wrong?” asks Alice, trying to help Jason. Hal looks unconcerned. Betty and the others have already risen to their feet, watching as Jason gulps for air, a flush spreading across those pale cheeks.

  
“He’s choking,” says Hal helpfully, standing belatedly. Alice and Charles have Jason on his back, on the table. Jason’s limbs are thrashing helplessly, his face turning purple. Betty manages to grab one of Jason’s arms, holding him down as Charles tries to force a spoon into Jason’s mouth. Chic and Polly have a leg each, wrestling with the surprising force of Jason as he lurches and tries to free himself, screaming in pain. It is not a scream that Betty has ever heard before, almost a retch rather than a yell, and Jason is in agony.

  
It gets worse and worse; the food is strewn over the table, making it harder to get any kind of grip on Jason’s arms or torso, and the pain is making Jason fight them harder and harder, his spine arching in a horrible curve. Suddenly, his back curves even further, until Betty thinks his spine will break.

  
The skin on his chest _rips._

  
Polly leaps back with a scream, dappled with Jason’s blood.

  
For a moment, everything is very still.

* * *

The little girl was called Forsythia, which had to be the strangest name Betty had ever heard. Still, she was from a cult, so maybe they all had weird names like that. 

  
“Now think, Forsythia, concentrate,” Doiley was saying, bending down to look at the unresponsive girl. Keller was in the corner, sorting out his med-kit, and made unimpressed eye-contact with Betty. Clearly more than one Serpent thought Doiley was useless; he was even more useless talking to the poor child than he had been searching the Farm. “Just... start at the beginning. Where are your parents?”

  
“Doiley, why don’t you give it a rest?” asked Betty, wondering what good shouting at a traumatised child was meant to do. He was almost as little use as Veronica, who had at least admitted that she was useless with children, and was making herself useful poring over the Farm’s accounts rather than wasting her time.

  
Doiley snapped something dismissive about the silent child, and walked off in a bad temper. Jughead was pacing outside, nibbling on another ration bar, clearly eager to get his commanding officer’s attention, without completely ignoring protocol. 

  
“Physically, she’s alright,” said Keller, informing Doiley rather pointedly. “Borderline malnutrition, but I don’t think there’s any permanent damage. She’s scared as well, sir, of the people who’ve arrived and turned everything on its head, so maybe questioning her like an adult isn’t helping. Sir.”

  
“We’re wasting our time,” snapped Doiley, and marched off to where Jughead was hovering. Keller followed him, offering both Forsythia and Betty a sympathetic grin. The Serpent glanced down at Veronica, mouthed _I love those shoes_ , and disappeared from view.

  
Betty wondered if what she remembered from looking after her cousins would come in handy, especially bribing them with food. Keller had said Forsythia was malnourished, but perhaps something nice to eat would help her out of her shell, after weeks of starvation rations.

  
“Try this,” said Betty, gently helping the little girl hold the cup. “It’s chocolate milkshake.”

  
It dribbled down Forsythia’s chin.

  
“Pretty disgusting, right?” agreed Betty, grabbing a cloth to clean the sticky stuff off the girl’s chin. When Forsythia didn’t protest, Betty dampened the cloth in her own water, and slowly, gently, cleaned the rest of the girl’s face. 

  
“V, looks like there’s a little girl under all this,” she called. Veronica looked up.

  
“A pretty one, too,” she agreed, cautiously. Forsythia remained unresponsive, staring off into the space behind Betty’s shoulder. 

  
“I don’t know how you managed to stay alive, but you’re a brave kid, Forsythia,” Betty sighed, disappointed that she hadn’t been able to get the girl to respond. She turned away for a moment, cleaning the cloth, until she thought she heard a noise.

  
There was a hint of a whisper, vocal chords unused to talking after weeks of isolation. The girl mumbled something that Betty couldn’t make out, as she turned back slowly, desperate not to spook the girl.

  
“What’d you say?”

  
“J... Jellybean. My name’s... Jellybean. Nobody calls me Forsythia, except my mother.”

  
_“Jellybean,”_ breathed Betty. “I like that. I’m Betty. It’s nice to meet you. And who is this faithful hound?”

  
She lifted the ragged sheep-dog toy that Jellybean clutched in her dirty little paw.

  
“Hot Dog.”

  
“Hello, Hot Dog.”

  
Betty made Hot Dog wag his tail at Jellybean, hoping that it wouldn’t come unstitched in her fingers. The girl almost gave Betty a tiny smile.

  
“What about your mom, Jelly? Is she around here too, hiding? Any other family?”

  
“I had a brother, once, a long time ago,” said Jellybean, thinking hard. “But he was never here. Just me and Mom.”

  
“Just you and your Mom, huh?” Betty swallowed. “Can you tell me where she is?”

  
“They’re dead, alright? Can I go now?!”

  
Veronica looked up at Jellybean’s outburst, shocked to hear something so baldly stated by a tiny creature. Betty sighed, and closed her eyes.

  
“I’m sorry, Jellybean,” she said. If Jellybean was the lone survivor, of God knows how many – if they were here far too late – it was time to pick up the little girl, return to the _Whyte Wyrm_ , and never return. Maybe burn the place to the ground for good measure. “Wouldn’t you be safer here with us? These people are here to protect us. They’re soldiers.”

  
“It won’t make any difference,” replied Jellybean bleakly. Something crashed, and Jellybean and Betty looked up to see Veronica storming out of the room, hand clasped over her mouth.

In the operations room, Jughead had finally managed to persuade Doiley to look at something useful, rather than just frightening that little girl. Doiley stepped up behind Sweet Pea and St Clair – a weird combination of people if Jughead had ever seen one – and loomed over their shoulders. Jughead plonked himself on his haunches on the bench alongside the computer panel, unwilling to let their liability of an officer out of his sight. It was always Earthers like that who made officers in the Marines, happy to lord it over their colonial troops for a while before heading to a desk job back on the old world, far away from thin air and low gravity. 

  
“What am I looking at?” demanded Doiley.

  
“PDTs,” answered St Clair, clearly annoyed to be answering to someone like Doiley. Jughead would have sympathised with him if St Clair didn’t have a stick up his ass the size of a sequoia. “Personal Data Transmitters. Every Farmie had one surgically implanted; it was a Farm rule that LGC was happy to help with.”

  
“If they’re within twenty clicks, we’ll read it out here,” drawled Sweet Pea. “So far, nothin’, Jones- sir.”

  
“Brilliant,” said Doiley, and attempted to wander off again. Jughead gestured at Doiley to Fangs and Toni, and the two of him instantly converged in front of Doiley, asking him urgent and inane questions about drills and routine. Doiley straighten instantly and started responding with a lot more enthusiasm, clearly delighted for a chance to show off his discipline. Jughead was still wondering why they’d sent a serious squad like the Serpents out on such a potentially dangerous mission, to rescue civilians, with such a green officer. Maybe one day Doiley would be competent, have all that polish and sharp edges knocked off him by time and experience.

  
It was going to be too late for this mission, though. Dilton fucking Doiley was gonna be a pain in the ass the whole way.

  
“How long’s it gonna take, Pea?” murmured Jughead. “No hurry, you’re doing great. I just want to know how soon we can just lift off and get three civilians and a nine-year-old out of here.”

  
“Not sure, man.” Sweet Pea was a joker, and an angry dickhead when he felt like it, but he took this part of his job seriously. “Scanning the processor now- YO! Heads up, Serpents, Sarge, Lieutenant, I found them!”

  
“Are they alive?!” asked Doiley, darting over. At least he had some of his priorities right.

  
“Dunno, man, but it looks like all of them, all over at the processing station. Sub-level three, under one of the main cooling towers.” Sweet Pea had grown up in the shadow of an atmosphere processor, just like Jughead. He knew exactly what they were like inside, and how good an idea it was to stay away from them most of the time.

  
It really was all of the Farmies’ PDTs, gathered together within a couple of hundred metres.

  
“It looks like a goddamned town hall meeting,” mused Jughead. “What the hell are they all doing there?”

  
“Let’s saddle up, Jones,” said Doiley, straightening with a satisfied look on his face. _Of course_ the little guy was delighted to be sending his squad into the depths of that machine. He’d be sitting pretty in the APC with Archie and the civilians, watching everything on the monitors. Of course Jughead knew _why_ the officers did that, and it made sense; but did Doiley have to relish his opportunity so much, when some of the Serpents might not make it back?

  
Sergeant Jones was already shouting orders, sending all of the Serpents (barring Cheryl and Moore) back out to the APC. Jughead located his helmet, took one last defiant bite of his ration bar, and followed suit. Maybe if he could keep things calm, the sinking feeling in his stomach about their over-excited Lieutenant would go away.

The APC lumbered over the rocky terrain, shaking its passengers around inside the cramped cabin. Jellybean was whispering encouragement to Hot Dog, almost invisible in the darkness apart from her red bow. Oddly enough, after Veronica had run away to cry earlier, she seemed much more accustomed to Jellybean, and was sitting close to the little girl, arms ready to catch her every time it looked as if Jellybean might lose her balance. 

  
Betty was far too jittery to sit comfortably in her seat, instead standing by the monitors, hanging off the handrail above. If anyone thought this was rough, they had never gone through one of the more dodgy landings in a ship as old as the _Riverdale._ The terrain of another planet was nothing by comparison.

  
The atmosphere processor was still cheerily firing on all cylinders, pumping oxygen into the air for people who would never breathe it. It opened the automated doors as the APC approached, welcoming them helpfully into the bay. Archie let the APC grind to a halt, and parked it neatly near the entrance for the sub-levels, where the Serpents would make their way on foot. Jellybean was fascinated by Archie, as, unlike Betty, she had heard of artificial people, but never met one. Archie took her shy questions with good humour.

Doiley was spouting orders that meant very little to Betty, as she watched the feeds from their cameras inch forwards as the Serpents deployed into the atmosphere processor. 

  
“ _I see the stairwell – Sweets, you’re on point, Jughead, boy, I want you watching our tails. Nice and easy, Serpents, let’s watch those corners_.”

  
Betty hadn’t realised before that the monitors showed not just the feeds from the helmet cams, but feeds for each of the Serpents’ heartbeats and lifesigns. It was comforting to see how slow and calm some of them were, and the sound of the motion trackers repeated the heartbeats she saw in front of her.

  
Jellybean was swinging on the handrail beside Betty. Behind both of them, Veronica was watching reluctantly – Betty wondered exactly how much her friend was regretting her impulsive decision to come – and Nick St Clair loomed, still sneering at almost everything he saw.

  
Why was the asshole even here?

  
The Serpents proceeded down the stairs to the third sub-level.

  
“I’m not making that out too well, what is it, Mantle?” asked Doiley. 

  
“ _You tell me, bro, I only work here_.”

  
‘That’ was a strange layer surrounding the corridors on sub-level three. Betty kept almost being able to recognise patterns in it – _like vertebrae – like tendons – like ribs_ \- before her mind would dart away, refusing to focus on what she could see. The Serpents were clearly uncomfortable with it too; every time a video feed lingered on some part of the smooth, bony lines of the stuff for too long, the helmet-wearer would clearly snap their head away.

  
Toni was on point, now, standing the furthest into the tunnel. The stuff that she could see visibly glistened.

  
“What is it, B?” asked Veronica shakily. Betty shook her head slowly; there had been nothing like the stuff on the _Riverdale,_ and the only thing that it looked like to her... well, it wouldn’t be useful for their civilian consultant to start whimpering that looked like part of some huge, dark, human skeleton.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. Doiley shook his head at her – _as if he’d be any more useful, seeing what I’ve seen_ – and ordered the serpents inside. 

  
“ _Watch your fire and check targets, remember we’re looking for civvies in here_ ,” came Jones’ calm order. The cameras were all on the fritz, dripping with the moisture in the interior of the processor.

“ _Easy, nice and easy_.”

  
“ _Tighten it up, Mantle, we’re getting a little thin_ ,” said Jughead. Betty focussed on his camera feed, the only one showing the way back out of the tunnel. She was relieved, and disgusted with herself for being so, that Jughead had the best chance of getting out of there. Assuming, of course, that anything attacked them for the front and not the rear.

  
_Fuck_.

  
“ _It looks like some sort of secreted resin_ ,” said Keller, breaking a piece off and holding it in front of his camera. It didn’t show much, but at least Keller was actually analysing something about the bizarre substance. The kind-hearted medic was more inquisitive than some of the other Serpents, who seemed very keen on just shooting the crap out of whatever they found.

  
_“Yeah.”_ Jughead’s voice was doleful. “ _But secreted from what_?”

  
“Gross,” said Veronica, helpfully. The little Serpent triangles on screen edged closer to the dots representing the colonists, now almost within visual range. Betty looked at the schematics, remembering her earlier fascination with the internal mechanisms of the atmosphere processor.

  
_Oh._

  
“Lieutenant,” she said hurriedly, hoping she was wrong. “What do those pulse rifles fire?”

  
“Ten-milimetre explosive-tip caseless,” Doiley reeled off proudly. Betty ignored the stuff she couldn’t understand, and concentrated on ‘explosive’. “Why?”

  
“Look where your team is, they’re right under the primary heat exchangers,” Betty explained, still hoping that someone would assuage her fears. “If they fire their weapons in there, won’t they rupture the cooling system?”

  
“Oh, oh, Miss Cooper is absolutely right!” Nick St Clair interrupted, making himself useful for what Betty thought might be the first time in his life. 

  
“So, so what?”

  
“So, the entire system is basically just one big fusion reactor. So, I think the blonde girl’s talking about a thermonuclear explosion and, uh, _adios muchachos_.”

  
_“¡Cabron!”_ retorted Veronica, mocking Nick's atrocious Spanish. “She’s noticed a flaw in your plan and you’re insulting her? A gaping hole, I might add?! And you, Lieutenant, you’re only going to listen when St Clair tells you so? God, Doiley, you need to do something!”

  
“Shit,” said Doiley. “Look. Uh... Jones. Look. ...We can’t have any firing in there. I, uh, want you to collect magazines from everybody.”

“Is he fucking crazy?” said Sweet Pea. Normally, Jughead would have told him to shut up, but honestly, Sweets was just expressing a legitimate opinion. Why would Doiley order them to lose their main weapons? And the officer didn’t seem inclined to let them know why.

  
“What the hell are we supposed to use, man, harsh language?” asked Mantle. Toni rolled her eyes so hard, Jughead thought they might stay in the back of her heads.

  
“ _Flame units only_ ,” said Doiley, pathetically. “ _I want rifles slung_.”

  
“Sir,” said FP. “I think-”

  
“ _Flame units only. And no grenades_.”

  
The Serpents grumbled as FP wearily collected their magazines, bagging them together and handing the bag to Mantle.

  
“Thanks a lot, sarge,” Mantle griped. FP turned to look at Jughead, and placed his hand on his shoulder. He opened his mouth, and Jughead wondered for a moment if the old man was going to say something important; but all that came out was “Jughead, boy, cover our ass,” and FP was already moving on. Jughead sighed, and pulled his antique shotgun out of his pack, where he always kept it.  
Mantle looked at him with surprise, having never seen Jughead use it before. 

  
“I like to keep it handy,” Jughead admitted. “For close encounters.”

  
Mantle snorted, and they moved into the heart of the tunnels. 

  
“ _No movement_ ,” called Sweet Pea. Ahead of them, though, the Serpents had started to bunch into a group, gazing up at the walls in horror.

  
A pair of feet, still pathetically clad in laceless trainers, stuck out from the wall. The rest of the body continued higher up, encased in the sticky resin. FP swore, his face looking pale even through the other Serpents’ video cams. FP’s own camera was focused on the body, the Farmie’s mouth still gaping, arms still spread in a horrified pose around the gaping cavern that was left in the chest.

  
“Veronica, can you take Jellybean and go sit up front?” asked Betty. Veronica was as white as a sheet; her features were drawn in uncomprehending horror, and she seemed glad of the excuse to stop watching. Jellybean was more reluctant to go, regarding the image with bleak familiarity.

  
“C’mon, Miss Bean, let’s go up front and you can tell me more about Hot Dog,” Veronica whispered, and Jellybean pulled away reluctantly. 

  
The walls were made of Farmies, all in the same grim state as the first one that FP had shown. The motion trackers continued their dull thud, still showing no signs of movement. Jughead clearly paused for a moment, and his camera feed dipped down as he bent to poke at something with the end of his shotgun.

  
“ _This the same kind of egg, Bet- Cooper_?” he asked, moving the leathery sides gingerly.

  
“I never saw them the first time, but it looks like it.”

  
“What kind of eggs, Corporal?” snapped Doiley.

  
“ _The ones in Cooper’s report. The ones these things_ -” Jughead showed them a skeletal creature he’d lifted with the shotgun, “- _hatch from_.” He dropped the sticky thing in disgust.

  
“ _Steady, Serpents, let’s finish our sweep_ ,” said FP.

  
Keller had gone in for a closer look at one of the colonists, closer to ground level than any of the others. The resin cocoon was clearer there, and it seemed to cover mainly the arms and torso, so that the captives’ legs could flail, and they could see, but they couldn’t free themselves. _Clever,_ reflected Betty. T _he minimum amount used to completely restrict a human’s movement. Although, they decided the architecture of the tunnels needed remodelling, so maybe they’re not that goddamned efficient._

  
Keller lifted the head of his Farmie, and leapt back as the Farmie’s eyes snapped open.

  
“ _FP_!” he yelled. “ _Sarge, I’ve got a living one! You’re gonna be alright, I’m a medic, we’re gonna get you out of here_.”

  
_“Please,”_ whispered the woman. She was looking straight into the camera; her eyes were glazed over with pain. “ _Kill me_.”

  
Betty heard Veronica’s sharp intake of breath.

  
Veronica barely even knew what was coming next. 

  
The Farmie started to choke. Keller was calling _seizure, help_! but it wasn’t a seizure, Betty had seen it happen before and she could hardly breathe herself. She was desperate to tell Keller and the others _get back, get away, it’s already too late_ but the words weren’t coming out, and the only people who had really read her report were Jughead, at the back of the troop, who couldn’t see what was happening, Archie, who was back at the Farm and Doiley. Doiley was sitting there, staring, as little use as Betty; but Betty was _allowed_ to be useless, she’d done all of this already, hadn’t she? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t her turn this time. 

  
The woman in the wall was wearing a yellow t-shirt with _The Farm_ emblazoned across it, in those big friendly letters that Betty had seen on their way into the colony. FP was yelling at Kevin to get back, but Kevin was a medic trained to help people wherever he found them, and he was pressing closer, gasping about convulsions.

  
The t-shirt tore, the cheery _Farm_ and its stylised figures disappearing in a spray of blood. Betty clutched her own chest in unconscious sympathy, gasping painfully, her own nightmares shown to her across multiple camera feeds. 

  
The Farmie screamed, gasped one last breath, and something started to rip through her chest. It unfurled, quivering and bathed in blood, and _screamed_ at the Serpents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S KICKING OFF
> 
> it doesn't get much better from here tbh


	10. One By One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Serpents meet the Xenomorphs. No, it doesn't go well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really know why i'm still uploading this, i have gone off riverdale so sharply this week. warning for negativity in the end notes

Alice, for the first time that Betty can remember in a few years, is being responsible. 

  
She always puts herself before her children, of course, but it’s almost performative; her protectiveness of Polly and Betty’s mental health, her pride in Charles’ skills, it’s all an extension of her own feelings, her own achievements. Alice’s love comes with so many strings attached; she once blurted to Betty that _you’re my favourite, I love you most, you should stay close to me so I can take care of you_. It did not make Betty feel good. She has never told Polly or Charles.

  
It made sense for Betty to be the one to climb into the ducts after the creature. The ducts have been Betty’s job for years; she’s smaller than Charles or Chic, more flexible than Alice, better equipped to cope with both the tasks and the close confines than Polly, who prefers any shipboard job that doesn’t require hours hunched up into a ball.

  
Alice was not having it. 

  
“Who gets to go into the vent?” asks Polly. 

  
“I do,” says Betty.

  
_“No,”_ says Alice instantly. It is not her usual harsh snap; she stares at her children, tears in her eyes. If anyone else dies it will be her husband, or one of her babies, and Betty thinks even Alice Cooper, who is so caught up in her own neuroses, could not bear that. “You and your father will take the main airlock; Polly, Charles, cover up the maintenance hatch, please.”

  
Betty gazes at her mother. Inside her head she is wondering _why weren’t you this decisive before? Why did you demand I let you aboard the ship, let this thing aboard, let Dad develop his fascination with it?_

  
She doesn’t ask. 

  
Within an hour, Alice is deep in the vents, her family waiting outside as the thing draws nearer and nearer on the motion tracker. Alice has a flamethrower and a lamp; Alice is basically defenceless. Betty is trying very hard not to think about how badly this could go.

  
It does.

  
“Mommy,” Polly is whimpering. “Move, Mom! It’s moving right towards you, Mom, move, get out of there!”

  
Charles is sweating, silent, grasping Polly’s hand on the motion detector. Hal, Betty notes, is utterly silent, his face expressionless. They can all hear their mother’s laboured breathing, the clanking as Alice abandons her brave attempt and climbs on to the ladder, back towards her children and safety. 

  
“Move, Mom, move, Mommy, get out of there!” Polly’s pleading does not abate, screaming at her mother to come back. “The other way, the other way, God-”

  
There is a terrible screech, and Alice’s signal disappears. 

  
“Mom?” gasps Betty.

  
“No,” weeps Polly.

  
“Take it easy, take it easy,” says Charles, ever calm, but his voice is shaking. “Mom?”

  
Their father is emotionless. Their mother is gone.

* * *

  
After that, it was total chaos. FP aimed a flamethrower on the juvenile Xenomorph tearing its out of the now (mercifully) dead Farmie’s chest, but it was too late. Even as the screams died, a hiss sounded throughout the atmosphere processor.

  
Around the Serpents, walls started to uncurl.

  
“Movement!” yelled Sweet Pea, the motion detector going crazy.

  
“What’s the position?”

  
“Uh, can’t lock in!”

  
“Talk to me, Sweet Pea!” roared FP, edging backwards.

  
“Uh, multiple signals, they’re closing!”

  
“ _What’s happening, Jones, I can’t see anything_!” demanded Doiley. Of course the little prick couldn’t see anything, safe and secure in his mobile command unit three floors away.

  
“ _Pull the Serpents out, Doiley_!” came Betty’s voice, clear even through Doiley’s mike. 

  
“Movement in front and behind!” called Sweet Pea. Jughead squinted, unable to see anything moving in front of him. “I’m telling you, something’s moving and it ain’t us! They’re all around us and I can’t see them!”

  
“Maybe they don’t show up on infra-red at all,” said Keller, his voice thick with fear. 

  
Something reached out of the wall, grabbed Keller, and yanked him off his feet. Keller screamed, and unleashed his flamethrower – right into Mantle, who had been carrying the bag of ammunition. Mantle didn’t have a chance, and stumbled back off the gantry, tumbling in a ball of flame into the depths below.

  
“Mantle!” yelled Mason, dashing to check. Keller was still screaming in terror as he disappeared, legs kicking desperately. Jughead saw the bag that Mantle had been carrying – _goddamn explosive bullets_ – and hauled Mason back, just slightly too late.

  
The back exploded, taking two of the Serpents with it, and hurling Jughead off his feet.

  
“ _Jesus Christ, Jones, what is going on_?”

  
“Mantle and Mason are down!” Jughead gasped, rolling away from the flames. He could hear the whine of their heartbeat monitors through the mike. “Keller and Clayton are off the board!”

  
“Dietrich, Mason, sound off!” FP yelled, a few moments behind, unable to comprehend what had gone so wrong so quickly. Mason screamed, disappearing from the heap he’d collapsed in after the explosion.

  
“Moose!” called Jughead, but the scream was gone before he’d even managed to catch a glimpse of his friend. 

  
“Let’s rock!” screamed Toni, and started firing blindly at the creatures, Fangs following suit with great enthusiasm. Jughead ducked – _fucking idiots_ – and reached for his own shotgun, trying to find a safe vantage point to fire from.

  
But how could there be a safe vantage point, when the creatures – _Xenomorphs, it took Betty’s entire crew to kill one and she was the only survivor and there are so many of them here_ – were coming out of the walls?

“Who’s firing, goddammit?!” yelped Doiley. Betty was getting so sick of being right; Doiley had been fuck all use, and now the Serpents were suffering the consequences of his indecision and confusion. If he'd explained to FP why they needed to avoid shooting – if he’d pulled the Serpents out, rather than leaving them defenceless – maybe Keller, Moose, the others would still be alive. Betty remembered how kind Kevin had been to Jellybean, how easily he’d taken to Veronica, and now he was gone. God, it was all falling apart, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  
“I ordered a hold fire!”

  
“ _They’re coming out of the walls_!” hollered Sweet Pea, and Betty didn’t know if she’d have been able to hold fire, even knowing how dangerous rupturing the coolant system would be. Doiley was still jabbering, trying to talk to FP, who couldn’t hear, ordering Fangs and Toni to hold their fire fruitlessly.

  
“ _Say again? All after incinerators_?”

  
“I want you to lay down a supressing fire and fall back by-”

  
FP gasped, and his camera feed went blank.

  
_“FP!”_ screamed Toni.

  
“ _Sarge, Sarge! Jughead_ -”

  
Jughead was the only thing resembling an officer left down there, although Betty couldn’t understand why Sweet Pea was calling him so insistently. 

  
“FP, talk to me,” whimpered Doiley. “Talk to me, FP-”

  
“He’s gone!” Betty couldn’t understand why Doiley had been put in charge of anything. “Get them out of there! Now!”

  
“Shut up,” muttered Doiley. “You shut up- Shut up!”

  
“Jughead- whoever’s left just get out of there, get the hell out of there right now-” Doiley cut her mike. “Goddammit!”

  
Jughead came into view on Sweet Pea’s camera, lost and confused in the shaky footage.

  
“ _Where’s FP_?!” he pleaded. “ _Where’s my dad_?!”

  
Betty’s heart stopped.

  
“ _He’s gone, Jug, let’s get the fuck out of here!”_

  
_“Let’s move it, Serpents, let’s go_!” shouted Jughead, barely missing a beat. The remaining video feeds all went crazy as the few Serpents left started trying a retreat, stumbling out of the fire and the darkness.

  
“Topaz,” said Doiley incoherently. “Sweet Pea? I…”

  
On the screen, Betty could see Jughead wielding that antique shotgun, an answering shriek from a Xenomorph suggesting that he had found his target. 

  
“I told them to fall back,” Doiley bleated. “I did, I told them-”

  
“They’re cut off!” Betty watched the chaos on the screens helplessly, nothing but chaotic images of terrified Serpents and so, so many long, oily black limbs, reaching out of the darkness. She grabbed Doiley, shaking him. “Do something!” Doiley gaped at her, his mouth opening and closing like a fucking idiot goldfish. “Fuck!”

  
She leapt away from him, up into the APC’s driving seat. It couldn’t be much harder to pilot than the Earth equivalent or one of the trucks in the docks at Quiet Mercy Station. Betty didn’t give a shit about risking her’s and Doiley’s lives if it might save some of the Serpents, although the thought of taking Jellybean and Veronica into danger gave her a millisecond’s pause. She glanced at Veronica, who was clutching Jellybean, and saw that her friend was terrified but determined, not questioning Betty for a moment. If they were going to survive, it wouldn’t be at the cost of the Serpents left terrified down there in the dark. Veronica gave her a sickly, encouraging nod, and whispered to Jellybean to hold on. 

  
Betty rammed the clutch into the metal, yanking the gear stick into place and launching the APC away from safety and into the tunnels. It handled dreadfully; you could’ve given Betty, or _Charles,_ a few hours to give it a tune-up and they could’ve had the thing smooth as one of the racing craft that did the big galaxy loops. But it would do. It would get Betty to Jughead, and the other Serpents.

  
“Cooper, what the hell are you doing?!” The annoyance appeared at her side, and started pulling at Betty’s arms, driving them into the wall briefly. “Turn around! That’s an order!”

  
“Get off me!”

  
The APC veered, smashing into the sides of the corridors. Veronica let go of Jellybean, who skittered off into a corner where she felt safe, and hauled Doiley out of the way. Nick St Clair still stood at the back of the APC, watching proceedings with a dumbfounded look on his face.

  
“You had your chance, Doiley!” shouted Veronica, and stood over the back of Betty’s chair protectively. “C’mon, B, let’s go!”

  
“Everyone should have a best friend like you!” gasped Betty, and drove them further on, into the complex. The APC still handled appallingly, but they were making it. Betty prayed that they wouldn’t lose more Serpents in the time it took her to get there. 

  
  
“C’mon!” yelled Jughead, hauling Sweet Pea along. The big Serpent had just caught a spray of the Xenomorph’s acid blood – _if he’d been even a foot to the left_ – and was cringing with agony, his leg smoking. “Fangs, Toni! C’mon!” He had no idea how they were going to make it back up to the surface, with those things behind them and the rest of the next blocking their progress. They were going to die. His dad was already dead, or worse. 

  
Suddenly, impossibly, the wall of the nest burst, and the blunt nose of the APC thrust itself through, bringing with it fresher air and a glimmer of hope. Jughead gaped at it – he’d assumed Doiley would follow protocol, remove himself and the civilians, and leave the Serpents there to rot. Clearly he’d misjudged the little fascist. 

  
“ _Jughead! Open the door, V_!” Betty’s voice sounded over the mike. He wondered why she was giving orders.

  
“Fangs, we are leaving!” Jughead bawled over his shoulder. Of course Fangs and Toni were still there, blasting away at those fucking creatures. “Fangs, Toni, come on!”

  
“Shit!” roared Fangs, his gun out of ammo. Toni was just ahead of him, still releasing bursts of fire. Jughead saw him drop the gun, and sling an incinerator round his neck. Fucking Fangs.

  
The APC opened, and Jughead threw himself and Sweet Pea inside. The most beautiful girl in the world – on any world – glanced back at them from the driving seat, and he understood suddenly why he was alive, instead of having been left to die.

  
_Betty._

  
Veronica, implausibly, was already busying herself finding a med-kit to treat Sweet Pea. She was still in that innocuous outfit, all stiletto heels and a cape, but she was clearly useful, and competent, unlike that fucking idiot St Clair, who was watching everything wordlessly. God, why the fuck was he here?

  
Toni appeared at the door, still firing out at the creatures, and Jughead hauled her inside, yelling at Fangs to hurry the fuck up. One of those fucking creatures reared up at Fangs, and without thinking about it, Toni blasted her gun at it.

  
She hit her target. The creature screamed and writhed, and its blood spattered all over Fangs. Fangs roared in agony, and Jughead closed his eyes against the image of that acid on him. Fangs had been one of the first people he met in the Serpents – they’d joined up around the same time – and now he was gone. Just like FP.

  
The last blast from Fangs’ incinerator hit the APC, and caught alight. 

  
“Fire in the hole!” yelped Sweet Pea, but Veronica was already on it, grabbing a fire extinguisher and dampening the flames. Toni was yelling and screaming, fighting Jughead to get back out there and rescue Fangs.

  
“He’s gone!” pleaded Jughead. “Toni, he’s gone!”

  
“No, no, Jughead, he’s out there, he’s coming!”

  
Jughead dropped his gun, and pulled Toni further into the vehicle.

  
“Forget him, he’s gone!” he gasped, and grabbed the handle to haul the door closed. Behind him, he could hear Betty starting up the engine. 

  
Two skeletal hands darted into the gap, and pulled on the door to re-open it. Those teeth, those great metallic teeth with their disgusting inner mouth snapped at Jughead, and he almost let go of the handle. Fuck, if he’d let go, they were all dead.

  
“Help with the door!” he yelled. Toni hurled herself against the handle, her weight sliding the door slightly further closed, but that mouth still shot its awful grin at them.

  
“Eat this!” came Sweet Pea’s voice, and he shoved the barrel of Jughead’s old shotgun into the gaping maw.

  
The instant that he pulled the trigger, Jughead leapt back, and the creature’s hands disappeared. Toni ducked and rammed the door closed, but Sweet Pea screamed in agony, not fast enough to escape the spray of acid blood. 

  
Jughead threw himself forwards, slamming the locks closed on the door, and dropping beside Toni.

  
“Betty!” he called. “Go, go, go!”

Betty threw the APC into reverse, bouncing over the wreckage of the nest. The APC was handling worse than ever, as well as being on fire, and she could hear her passengers stumbling around in the back. The equipment was no longer stowed properly, and it crashed around inside. She hoped that it didn’t hit anyone, and that if it had to, it hit Nick St Clair. The APC was considerably more beaten up than on the drive in, and she hoped she could get it safely back to the dropship to carry them off this fucking rock.

  
The glass above her shattered. One of them was on the roof, and she yelped, ducking as it reached for her. She’d hoped that they’d see as few of the creatures as on the way out as they had on the way in, but evidently this fucker had decided to follow them. She slammed on the brakes; her unwelcome passenger tumbled from the roof, screeching in disapproval, and she drove over it, only realising too late that the acid blood of an injured Xenomorph would wreak havoc on the bottom of the vehicle. 

  
But they were clear. They didn’t have time to wait for the doors to open, and she rammed through them, the APC flying out into the open space beyond the atmosphere processor. They hurtled further and further on to the planet’s surface, the APC squealing and protesting the whole way.

  
“…s alright, we’re clear!” Betty slowly realised that Jughead was beside her, talking to her. “Betty, we’re just grinding metal, we’re clear!” He put a gentle hand on her wrist, softening her grip on the controls. “Come on, ease down, you did great, we’re out! Ease down…” 

  
Slowly, slowly, Betty let the machine grind to a halt. It came to rest at an angle, but stable against the planet’s rocky surface. She relinquished the controls reluctantly, and looked up at Jughead, who was staring at her in utter wonder, panting with relief.

  
_The sergeant was his father_ , she thought, remembering his plaintive cry, back in the tunnels. _That’s him, me, and Jellybean who’ve all lost our family to those things. I should’ve tried harder to make them believe me. Oh God, they’re all dead because of me_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's not just the out-of-nowhereness of the betty and archie feelings? it's the inherent misogyny of this plotline, and the attitudes of the writers. why on earth did they think that a 2020 audience would be chill about this cheating plotline? it's just gross. i refuse to believe that the betty cooper we've seen in any other episode would do anything of the sort. for me, the season ended at 4x16 without this gross, chemistry-free, logic-free plotline.
> 
> enjoy the space monsters guys i had fun writing it once.


	11. After the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The survivors assess their situation, assuming it can't get much worse.
> 
> Oh, but it can

“We’re gonna blow up the ship,” says Betty. They are orphans, now, her and Polly and Charles. Charles is on his feet, waiting for orders; Polly has sunk further into her tears, but Betty knows her sister will fight to survive, won’t give up this easily. “We’ll take our chances in the shuttle. We’ll blow up the ship.”

  
She turns away from what’s left of their father. Charles grabs Polly’s arm, whispers come on to her kindly, and they leave the room. Betty thinks Charles turns back for one last look – she is so, so grateful that Charles did what he did, but she thinks that Charles will never really recover from any of this. None of them will. All three of them have lost their parents; Polly and Charles both lost the people they were in love with. Perhaps that’s why Betty is so much calmer, and knows what has to be done; she has lost less than them.

  
The pain and confusion swirling in her head doesn’t feel like less.

  
Charles turns around for one last look at Hal’s body, before closing the door. It will not be opened again. The mess can be Hal’s tomb.

  
Betty has a plan; it is not a good plan, but it’s the very best plan that they have.

  
It does not work.

  
“You okay, Jellybean?” asked Betty. The girl was huddled in the corner, coughing but apparently fine. “This is Jughead, okay? I don’t think you two met before.”

  
“A pleasure to meet you, Jellybean,” said Jughead, offering a filthy hand to shake. Jellybean took it, staring at the tall Serpent in confusion. “You mind if I call you JB? Just like my buddy Sweet Pea, over here, we call him SP, and the sarge… Well, you know what, never mind him. You okay with that?”

  
Jellybean nodded.

  
“I like JB,” she said. Betty managed a half smile at the girl. She’d promised that the Serpents would look after her, and would get them out of there. Jellybean had been right after all; all their fancy tech, and their numbers, hadn’t made any difference.

  
Betty took stock of the remaining crew of the APC; there was herself and Jellybean, of course, and Veronica, and St Clair, who had finally decided to make himself useful, and was half-heartedly tearing dressing strips for Veronica. Of the Serpents, only three remained: Sweet Pea, who was wincing from the acid burns on his arm; Toni, who was gazing furiously into space; and Jughead, who had headed to the back of the APC to check out their now unconscious officer.

  
“What happened to Doiley?” asked Betty. JB had followed her forwards, looking unimpressed at the man who had inadvertently contributed to the dreadful slaughter in the tunnels.

  
“Not sure. Maybe a concussion; but he’s alive,” said Jughead. He didn’t sound disappointed, but he didn’t sound relieved either.

  
FP Jones was his father, Betty reminded herself.

  
“No, Jug, he’s dead!” spat Toni. “Wake up, you son of a bitch, I’m gonna kill you!”

  
“Back off, Toni,” said Jughead calmly. 

  
“Jug, you heard him, he’s the reason we were down there unprepared, he’s the reason your dad-”

  
“I heard him, and we’re gonna take him back to base, and he’ll face justice there, okay? Not here, not like this, Topaz, you know you’re better than this. Somebody get me a first-aid kit.”

  
Veronica hurried over. Sweet Pea had recovered enough to stand, evidently, and he was inching his way over to the video screens.

  
“He’s not dead, Jughead. The sarge and Kevin… Keller, their life signs are real low but they ain’t dead, man!”

  
Jughead paled, and stepped over to look at the screens. Sure enough, two of the heartbeat monitors still showed faint signs of life.

  
“We’re going back in there, then!” Toni was already grabbing a pulse rifle, squaring her shoulders. “We don’t leave our people behind!”

  
Jughead was shaking his head wordlessly, his eyes fixed on his father’s life signs.

  
“There’s too many of them, Pea, it’s a suicide run,” he said hopelessly. 

  
“Better than a coward’s death, Jones, no Serpent stands alone-”

  
“Don’t you call me a coward!” snapped Jughead. Betty remembered Jughead hauling Sweet Pea into the APC, just a few moments ago, and Toni staying outside as long as possible, screaming for them to wait for Fangs. No-one here was a coward.

  
It was pointless. Anyone who went back down there would die.

  
“You can’t help them!” she said, raising her voice. The Serpents stopped yelling, and turned to look at her.

  
“You can’t,” she repeated, her voice softer. “Right now… they’re being cocooned, just like the others.”

  
Jughead met her gaze, looked one last time at his father’s heartbeat, faint on the monitor, and hung his head.

Sweet Pea’s armour was still smoking, and he needed more dressings and anti-toxins to try to repair the damage it had done to his skin. Toni and Veronica were both hovering beside him, taking it in turns to bear the brunt of his foul temper through the excruciating pain, with Nick as their resentful nursemaid. Nick had taken the full opportunity to be an asshole, alternating between insulting Doiley (which seemed fair), insulting the rest of the Serpents (less so), and making passive-aggressive comments at Betty for bringing them here (totally redundant, and if he carried on, Jughead was considering letting Toni work out some of her aggression on them). JB, the little girl, was a far more competent nursemaid than Nick already, and Veronica was showing her how to make a neat line of stitches along Sweet Pea’s wound, to JB’s delight.

  
If he put this in his book one day, no-one would ever believe him, goddammit, least of all the heiress, the ten-year-old and the sweet, pretty seventeen-year-old who’d risked her life to save them all.  
Betty was up front in the driving seat, staring out on to the surface of the planet through the shattered window. Her back was painfully straight, and her eyes seemed unfocussed.

  
Jughead hesitated. All of the other people under his supervision had something to occupy them, but Betty seemed lost. Would it be invasive to comfort her? Would she like a hug, or maybe his hands on her shoulders, or would that just be unwelcome physical contact from a sweaty, blood-stained Serpent who had just utterly failed to protect most of the people under his command.

  
“Jughead,” said Betty dully, before he could come to a decision. “Did you need something?”

  
“I…” Jughead swallowed. “I wanted to thank you.”

  
“For what?” Betty laughed bitterly. “Some great consultant I am. I led you all here, and nothing I’ve said or done helped.”

  
“Betty,” said Jughead. “We could hear over the microphones, you know? I know you tried to get Doiley to pull us out. I know it was you who came to rescue us. You’re the only reason any of us are still alive.”

  
“Jug…” Betty’s eyes filled with tears. “Most of your squad died. Your… He was your dad? The sergeant that… died?”

  
Jughead couldn’t think of an appropriate lie. He’d yelled it into the camera, and there was no way Betty hadn’t heard it. God, if Dilton had heard it, he was screwed. 

  
“Yeah,” he admitted eventually. “Yeah, he was my dad, for what it’s worth.”

  
“…do you want to talk about it?” offered Betty, her voice soft.

  
“No,” said Jughead. “But I read about your parents. Your family. It’s only fair.”

  
He sat down next to her, and offered her a ration bar. She shook her head, her eyes wide, never leaving his for a moment.

  
“I was born on a colony called Southside,” he said. “It’s small, and poor, and it’ll be years before the air is decent. I don’t know what made my parents decide there was a reason to have kids, but my dad was an alcoholic and my mom wanted to go. Eventually, whatever it was made them give up, and my mom jumped on the first ship she could find leaving Southside. Took my baby sister and ran. A couple of years after that, my dad left me with friends, and joined the Serpents.”

  
“How old were you?” asked Betty.

  
“Thirteen, fourteen,” said Jughead. “I didn’t even know where he’d gone. Just left me. I didn’t have anywhere to live, so people in the colony just kinda… shipped me around, when they could. I don’t know if my dad thought he was doing me a favour; he used to send checks back, sometimes, but he just left me there. Alone. They were the only reason I knew where he’d gone.”

  
“Oh, Jughead,” said Betty.

  
“As soon as I was old enough, I signed up, changed my name – it was the same as my dad’s – and I spent the whole time trying to join up with the Serpents. Eventually, I did, and…” Jughead sighed. “I don’t know what I thought would happen. I didn’t get my dad back. I don’t think I even wanted my dad back; but neither of us could leave, and so we were just stuck here. I knew it would probably end with one of us dead, or invalided out, but this…”

  
“That’s…” Alice had had her issues, and Hal certainly had, but for most of their life, Betty had known that her parents loved her, however suffocating and restricting that love was. Jughead’s parents had just dropped out of his life.

  
“Jughead, I’m so sorry,” whispered Betty. Her hands were uncurling slowly, reaching hesitantly for his own.

  
“He’s my dad, Betty,” said Jughead. Tears were beginning to leak from the corner of his eyes. “I never wanted to tell anyone. I was so ashamed, of what he did and what I did to get here.”

  
“What did you do?” asked Betty. Her own eyes were full of tears, and he hoped no-one else could see them, sitting in the front together, crying quietly over the families they’d lost.

  
“I-”

  
“Jones!” barked Toni. Jughead wiped his eyes, and stood to attention. “We’ve wasted enough time. I want to make a plan.”

  
She started enumerating their remaining weaponry, as Betty and Jughead headed back into the main body of the APC. Sweet Pea looked more stable now, the bandages looking clean, rather than just bleeding or smoking away from the remaining acid. Jellybean was still watching the process, and her little face was grave, fingers pulling anxiously at that ragged sheepdog doll.

  
“Let’s just bug out and call it even, okay?” said Sweet Pea. He was sweating; still clearly in pain, and still panicked. Toni was considerably more eager for a fight, suggesting all the high-tech weaponry that they’d never had the chance to use.

  
“I say we take off, and nuke the entire site from orbit,” said a voice coolly. Jughead looked up, and met Betty’s tranquil eyes. “It’s the only way to be sure.”

  
She was calm and collected now; if Jughead hadn’t just been crying with her, he wouldn’t have believed that she could look so unaffected when she suggested levelling the Farm and its atmosphere processor to the ground, reducing the surface of LV-426 to an irradiated rock.

  
“Fuckin’ A, Cooper,” said Sweet Pea. 

  
Even Toni looked impressed. 

  
“Whoa whoa, hold on a minute, there,” said Nick St Clair, coming to life for the first time in hours. “This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it.”

  
Betty scoffed. 

  
“They can bill me,” she said, contemptuous and disgusted.

  
“Look, Miss Cooper, this is an emotional moment for all of us, okay? Let’s not make snap judgements.”

  
Betty, Veronica and Toni all exchanged a glance.

  
“Look, this is clearly an important species, all right? We have no right to just, exterminate them.”

  
“No,” said Betty firmly.

  
“Watch us, St Clair,” added Toni, sidling up beside him with her rifle slung.

  
“Maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events, buddy, but we just got the shit kicked out of us!” said Sweet Pea, nearly rising. Veronica shoved him firmly back down to his feet. 

  
“Look,” said St Clair again, his voice placating. “I’m not an idiot, but I just cannot authorise that kind of decision on LGC’s behalf! Veronica, back me up here.”

  
“Back you up?” said Veronica. She put the bandages down, and straightened up to her full height. “I wasn’t going to say anything, because I agree; the corporation’s put an awful lot of money into this place, but really, Nick? A conservation message, from you, whose father once destroyed forty acres of a nature reserve for a new hunting lodge? Really? And don’t tell me I’m being emotional. You want to tell me, and the other women, that we’re reacting emotionally to this situation? You’re a patronising little shit. You always were. B, I have too much of an economic stake in this, and I’d like to be recused from the decision.”

  
“It’s okay, V,” said Betty, clearly pleased. “It’s not St Clair’s anyway, or even yours. I believe Corporal Jones now has authority? Since the operation’s still under military jurisdiction, and Jughead’s next in chain of command. Isn’t that right, Corporal?”

  
Jughead was reluctant to reply. His father had been years more experienced than him, and he’d already gone out pretty quickly. He didn’t even have the support of a full squad; just two other Serpents, the dropship crew, Archie, and then four civilians. Their chances didn’t look good to stay on the planet and fight it out, and the idea of being responsible for all of their safety was… well, ‘daunting’ seemed like an understatement, frankly. 

  
He’d never wanted to be in a command position; he only made corporal because he had a tendency to calm things down and take charge, when some of the younger Serpents started getting fighty. God knows, he didn’t need this.

  
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  
“Look.” St Clair crowded in close to Betty and Veronica, deliberately shutting the Serpents out of the conversation. “He can’t make that kind of decision; he’s just some hick, some colony country mouse, he doesn’t understand the kind of money that’s at stake here, okay? No offense.”

  
“None taken,” said Jughead coolly. What a prick. “Cheryl?”

  
“Standing by.”

  
“Prep for dust-off, we’re gonna need immediate evac.”

  
“Roger that, hobo, we’re on our way.”

  
“I say we take-off,” said Jughead, “Nuke the site from orbit.” He looked at Betty, who clasped her hands together, and gave him the brightest grin he’d seen from her. “It’s the only way to be sure.” 

Of course, it didn’t work like that. As soon as they were outside the APC, Jughead got a call from Cheryl, panicked and yelling _it took Mad Dog – Munroe’s gone – I ejected, Jughead, the ship’s gone!_

  
The dropship’s course changed, and it started yawing through the air, nose dipping dangerously. It was still headed for them.

  
“Run!” yelled Betty, hauling Jellybean off her feet and pelting out of the ship’s path. Nick St Clair was running in a straight line – the idiot was going to keep himself directly in the ship’s path – until Toni yanked him in another direction, behind one of the rock formations.

  
Betty threw herself and Jellybean behind another rock formation, and braced them against the crash. The noise of the crashing ship drew nearer and nearer, until Betty felt another body hurl itself on top of her and Jellybean, taking most of the heat as the ship drew nearer.

  
It passed over their heads, smashed into the APC, and crashed into the mouth of the atmosphere processor. There was one, last, larger explosion, and then just the sound of the fires left burning in its path.

  
Jughead – of course it was Jughead – lifted his arm, and let Betty up to look. The APC and the dropship were both completely destroyed, flames burning brightly against the dull light of the planetoid’s sun. It looked like all of them were okay; Veronica and Toni were sheltered by a rock formation a few feet away from Betty, Jughead and Jellybean’s, and St Clair and Sweet Pea were both safe. 

  
Jughead kicked a bit of burning wreckage away, and leapt to his feet to remove another section of flaming hull away from Doiley, whose stretcher had miraculously avoided any damage. Toni started to help, patently reluctant.

  
“Great, that’s just fucking great, man, now what the fuck are we supposed to do?!” bawled Sweet Pea. “We’re in the shit now, man!”

  
“Will you take it down, Sweet Pea?!” snapped Jughead, grabbing the taller Serpent by the armour, and dropping him. He looked at Betty, Veronica and Jellybean, wandering uselessly through the wreckage. “You alright?”

  
He’d lost the crown helmet, and his longish dark hair made him look even younger. Betty nodded, and walked over to JB.

  
“I guess we’re not gonna be leaving now,” said JB, cuddling Hot Dog closer.

  
“I’m sorry, Jelly,” said Betty softly. “And you, V, if you’d never made friends with me you wouldn’t be here.”

  
Veronica waved a hand dismissively, but she looked utterly lost, gazing at the wreckage of their escape route. 

  
“That’s it, game over, man, game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now, Jones? I’m freaking out! What are we gonna do?” Sweet Pea was staggering around, screaming at bits of wreckage or whoever was in his path.

  
“Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple of songs, catch some lightning bugs with Mason jars?” replied St Clair nastily, squaring up to Sweet Pea. Betty hated men.

  
“Tais-toi,” snapped Veronica. “Ciera la boca! Nicholas, you’ve been less than no use since you got here, why don’t you ever learn to shut your stupid mouth and do something other than being fucking patronising? You’re an entitled little shit, and that’s coming from me!”

  
“We better get back, cos it’ll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night,” said Jellybean, before faintly adding “Mostly.”

  
Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so sick of the writers and their misogyny. the ted man is literally the worst thing that's ever happened to the show, apart perhaps from its success in series 1 leading to more series.
> 
> i get that it's only a tv show, but people were invested, and i think we were all enjoying it as a source of escapism? so turning it from stupid high-camp mystery nonsense to hastily constructed, genuinely horrible betrayals is a fair thing to feel hurt by.


	12. A Beautiful Day on the Farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The survivors try to make the best of what's left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some notes on my feelings about canon at the end.

Archie was waiting for them in the Farm, his normally cheery face set to a glum expression. He had been listening the entire time, and had already been out to rescue a furious Cheryl from her ejector seat. The pilot was now sitting entwined with Toni, grateful beyond belief that her girlfriend had been one of so few survivors.

  
“Cheryl,” Veronica had said. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  
Cheryl had pouted, before breaking into a smile. 

  
“You too, Veronica,” she said. “Believe it or not, I’m glad you survived.”

  
“It’s implausible,” Veronica had remarked privately to Betty, “which is why I know my father, Hiram Lodge, made sure that she’d be in the Serpents, and the Serpents would be the ones assigned to protect us. Two of my exes, Daddy? It’s not very subtle. Still, I’d take Cheryl Blossom over Nick St Clair any day.”

  
St Clair was dithering around at the back of the operations room, neither contributing to their discussion, nor willing to get out of Jughead and Sweet Pea’s way as they hauled the remnants of their equipment around. He was sprawled in one of the ops chairs, currently eyeing Toni and Cheryl as the two women attempted to comfort one another. Every time Jughead or Sweet Pea had to move past him, he made a great show of moving his legs, sighing as if it was some cruel imposition.

  
It was a much smaller haul than earlier. The APC had been a terrifyingly well-armed vehicle (had Toni said something about nerve gas? The idea of the Earth administration equipping their soldiers with nerve gas to put down an insurrection from colonists was pretty frightening), but the dropship crash had taken pretty much everything that the APC contained with it, barring the rifles that the Serpents had been carrying and a couple of bits of personal equipment.

  
“That’s not good,” Jughead said, looking at their low ammunition, “About fifteen of these grenades, too.”

  
Jellybean reached for one enthusiastically.

  
“Don’t touch that!” said Jughead nervously, “It’s dangerous, JB.” He flashed Jellybean a brief grin, softening his authoritative tone.

  
Betty had noticed that Jughead was barely letting Jellybean out of his sight. It made sense; she was the most vulnerable of them all, despite have survived for even longer and against more of the creatures than Betty had; but some protective instinct had obviously been triggered in Jughead, and he was hovering over the little girl like an anxious older brother. He handed her his recovered helmet instead; the crown-stencilled thing swamped her, but she seemed happy to fiddle with the microphone and camera. Betty wasn’t sure where Hot Dog had gone.

  
“Is that the only flamethrower?” asked Betty, remembering how desperately grateful she had been for the flamethrowers Charles had rigged on the _Riverdale,_ even if none of them had ever got the chance to use them against the creature. 

  
“It’s only half-full, but it’s functional, and there’s another damaged one,” replied Jughead. “The good news is, we’ve got four of these robot sentries. I think they could really come in handy.”

  
Toni had adopted one of the pulse rifles already, and was hefting it from hand to hand. Veronica seemed absorbed by something, only half-invested in a conversation she couldn’t contribute to.

  
“How long after we’re reported missing can we expect a rescue?” asked Betty. “I still don’t understand why we couldn’t have left someone in orbit about the ship. Then we wouldn’t be stuck in this situation.”

  
“Doiley’s idea,” said Cheryl dully. “Munroe and I usually alternate between who takes the dropship and who remains spaceside. DILF Jones always had it that way, and none of the other officers complained, but that little creep said it was a waste of resources.”

  
Betty wondered if she had known that the sergeant was Jughead’s father. From the spite in Cheryl’s tone, she thought perhaps Cheryl did.

  
“How long?” demanded St Clair, ignoring Cheryl’s criticism of his hand-picked officer. Jughead exchanged a look with Toni, who nodded exhaustedly.

  
“…seventeen days,” said Jughead reluctantly.

  
“Seventeen?” repeated Betty, horrified.

  
“How many?!” shouted Sweet Pea. “Jones, we’re not going to last seventeen hours! Those things are gonna come in here, like they did before, and they’re gonna come in here and they’re gonna kill us!”

  
“Sweet Pea!” snapped Betty. “Sweet Pea, listen to me! Jellybean, a little girl, survived longer than that, with no weapons, and no training. Right?”

  
A tiny hand saluted under the crown helmet.

  
“Why don’t you put her in charge, Princess?! Why are we listening to you, you aren’t even a Serpent!”

  
“You better start dealing with it, Sweet Pea,” snapped Betty, “because we need you, and I’m sick of your bullshit. I want you to get on a computer, and call up a floor-plan. You understand? Construction blueprints, anything that shows the layout of this place. Are you listening?”

  
“Yeah,” said Sweet Pea defiantly. 

  
“I need to see any way into the Farm. We don’t have much time.”

  
“Okay,” said Sweet Pea, turning away with a scowl. “Okay, I’m on it.”

  
Toni and Cheryl exchanged a look, seeming faintly impressed by Betty’s handling of the situation, and followed Sweet Pea out of the room, Cheryl announcing airily that they were going to look for food. Archie suggested that he go to med-lab and continue analysing the creatures; Jellybean and Veronica followed, both apparently distracting themselves by indulging their fascination with Archie.

  
Betty and Jughead were abruptly the only people left in Operations.

  
  
Jughead wasn’t sure how to start a conversation with the girl he’d blurted his ridiculous sob story to, who was apparently hiding a steelier spine and a better tactical mind than most of the marines he’d ever met. To his shame, he’d been even more entranced by her cool responses to Sweet Pea, who he’d certainly been intimidated by at first. The Betty he’d been constructing in his mind was clearly more than just a heroine who needed protecting; he’d been unconsciously placing her on a pedestal, thinking that she was too sweet and innocent to tangle with the big bad Serpents.

  
If they ever got out of here, he was going to re-write his entire novel, and make her the focus. Hopefully, by then he’d be able to talk to her without gabbling about his own life, or accidentally saying _I love you, I was wondering if you’d like to be the heroine of my novel and my life, and maybe we could run away from all of this and I’ll write you the happy ever after you clearly deserve_. Goddammit, this was ridiculous.

  
Luckily for him, Betty was entirely willing to talk.

  
“What do Sweet Pea, Toni and Cheryl want from me? What will it take for them to accept me? Do I need an unusual nickname and personalised armour? I’m trying my best!”

  
“To be fair,” said Jughead, “Sweet Pea is terrified, and most of the people he’s ever known have just been killed. I’m not excusing his behaviour, but I think you’re already winning brownie points with the others for dealing with the big idiot like that.”

  
Betty sighed, and shook her head.

  
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just… it’s hard. I can’t even compare this to before, any more, everything is so much more of a mess, and you… you’ve all lost so much. Especially you, Jug.”

  
“No, I’m sorry,” said Jughead. “I shouldn’t have dumped all of that on you before, all that stuff about my dad, and whatnot.”

  
“It’s okay,” said Betty. “It makes me… you guys make me feel less lonely. I’ve only had V for so long, and...”

  
To Jughead’s horror, she started to cry silently, tears trickling down the sides of her face.

  
“It’s the first time I have people to care about since my family fell apart on the Riverdale,” she gasped. “It’s all gone so badly, and I don’t think there’s anything I can do it stop it!”

  
“Don’t,” said Jughead, unable to resist going to her side, “don’t give up. I know things are bad right now – real bad – but it isn’t because of you, okay? You’ve already started planning, sent Sweet Pea off to find a way to protect us all. I read your report, remember? You’ve got out of this before. You’re holding us together. You’re so much stronger than these creatures, so much better, okay? So, don’t. Don’t let go, because we’re gonna get everyone out of here.”

  
His hands seemed to move to her shoulders without him ordering them to, desperate to comfort her. 

  
“I won’t,” whispered Betty, and curled into him, wrapping him into a hug. They stood there for a moment, just holding one another against the fear for their lives, the terror of the pair of them being responsible for the remaining people on LV-426.

“So this service tunnel must be how they’re moving back and forth,” said Betty, tracing the blueprint. Sweet Pea had returned with the plans fairly quickly, and Jughead was very grateful that the big Serpent hadn’t appeared in time to catch him hugging one of their civilian charges. He was grateful, too, that despite his foul temper, Sweet Pea had got on with his job, and provided them with ample information. He’d even seemed more willing to listen to Betty, now that he’d calmed down. 

  
“Yeah,” said Sweet Pea. “Straight from the processor to the Farm.”

  
He zoomed in on something. Out of the corner of her eye, Betty could see JB scrambling around, trying to get a good look at the display panel, but unable to move through the Serpents or Veronica and St Clair. St Clair, in particular, seemed to take a mild pleasure in getting in the little girl’s way. Betty scowled at him. What was the bastard even doing here again? She couldn’t bring herself to wish death on anybody, but a tiny bit of her regretted that of all the people who could have survived the disastrous expedition into the atmosphere processor, Nick had come out completely unscathed. 

  
JB scampered over to the other side of the display panel. Without hesitation, Jughead lifted her up, and sat her on the table so she could see. St Clair was such an idiot. Jellybean knew the complex better than anyone; even though she was a child, she could be invaluable to their planning.

  
Betty had already formed a plan, somehow. With minimal input from him and Sweet Pea, she’d worked out where they could seal off an area of the Farm to provide a bottleneck for the creatures to attack, and put the robot sentries in place to stop them.

  
“Right,” said Jughead, instantly grasping her plan. The others still looked a little lost. “Then we put the other sentry units here, and here? Right?”

  
“Right.”

  
“Outstanding,” said Jughead. “You’re brilliant, you know that?”

  
Betty smiled at him shyly. He thought he heard Toni scoff, as he held Betty’s gaze a moment too long. 

  
“All right, Serpents, let’s move like we’ve got a purpose!” he said. “Toni, Sweet Pea, you’re with me, we’re gonna set up the sentries. Corporal Blossom, if you can aid my staff here,” he patted JB’s back, “we’re going to need as many supplies, medical, food, as we can get, if we’re gonna hole up here.”

  
Cheryl rolled her eyes.

  
“Affirmative,” she drawled.

  
“Affirmative,” repeated Jellybean’s little voice. Jughead was reluctant to let the kid out of his or Betty’s sight, but Cheryl would gripe and moan, and then lay down her life to protect a child like Jellybean. Besides, Cheryl didn’t miss. Jughead lifted Jellybean off the table, and Cheryl took the girl’s hand, asking her good-humouredly where the Farm kept the maple-glazed ham and finest spirits.

  
“The Farm didn’t believe in that kind of stuff,” said Jellybean, her voice disappearing around a corner. “My mom was furious when she got here and found that out. Said they didn’t have anything that made life worth living.”

  
“Ugh,” said Cheryl, her tone echoing through the corridor. “Sounds like your mother was right, Jellybean. Only a fool would join a cult like this.”

  
“Are you gonna spend the whole time trying to chat up your new girlfriend?” asked Toni’s electronic voice. Jughead looked up from his work on the sentry display cameras, and scowled.

  
“That’s not a fucking appropriate thing to ask your commanding officer, is it, Topaz? You’re breaking Serpent Code,” he said. “She came up with our plan. She killed one of these things without a gun. She deserves your respect.”

  
“Plus Jughead wants to do her,” added Sweet Pea.

  
“Shut the fuck up and test the guns, Marine!” snapped Jughead. He’d been afraid of this, that his fondness for Betty would lead the Serpents to resent her. Well, they could get over it, and after this he could report them for insubordination. Assuming, of course, that they got out of there, which was a pretty far-fetched assumption.

  
“Gotta admit,” said Toni conversationally. “She is not what I was expecting.”

  
Jughead elected to ignore that passive aggressive comment, as well Sweet Pea’s concurring comment on Betty’s relative youth and assumed naïveté. 

  
“C’mon, Topaz, let’s get the hell out of here. A and B sentries are primed for testing.”

  
“Fire in the hole!” yelled Toni, and the sound of the guns blasting filled Jughead’s ears. Now all that they could do was hope that the guns had enough juice in them to stop the creatures.

“Here,” said Veronica. She and Betty were in the med-lab with Archie; Archie had asked Betty to give him any advice she could about the behaviour of the face-monsters she’d observed on her previous encounter. “Do you think Miss JB will like it?”

  
‘It’ was the stuffed sheepdog, Hot Dog, looking much healthier and more intact than he ha before. His tail, which had been dangling by a thread, was now looking much jauntier; his sad, drooping ears were now flapping merrily. Veronica had somehow found the time to wash the toy, as well, and the fur was now bright white, instead of a dull brownish-grey.

  
“V,” said Betty, touched by her friend’s effort to make a little girl’s life slightly brighter in the midst of their horrific situation. “This is… amazing. This is what you were doing?”

  
“I didn’t have anything useful to say,” said Veronica, shrugging. “Harvard Business School prepares you for a lot of situations, but this is beyond me, B. And it’s not entirely altruistic; I wanted something to distract me, while I waited for something I can help with. There are things no-one does better than Veronica Lodge; makeovers, party planning, dropping vintage bon-mots as if they were bonbons… Planning the defence of a former cult stronghold against a horde of monsters that want to lay eggs inside us is apparently not one of them.”

  
“Don’t put yourself down like that,” said Betty. “You kept your head the whole time. You’re the reason Sweet Pea still has use of his arm. You’ve gone out of your way to make Jellybean’s world just a little brighter. Imagine, you could be Doiley. Or worse, Nick St Clair.”

  
“Ugh,” said Veronica. “I cannot understand why my father sent him here. He and Cheryl, oddly enough, are both bad memories of a very different Veronica. Me and Cheryl? We were too similar. You know, we thought we were both heiresses, we wanted the same kind of thing, we had the same aims… it was great. I loved her. In the end, though, you put two people who are that determined to get their way together and you get a mess where no-one will compromise and you both just hurt each other repeatedly. Don’t judge her by the way she acts, as well; Cheryl desperately wants to feel like she belongs, and is loved and needed, and sometimes that comes out in very weird ways.”

  
“Oh,” said Betty. “And Nick?”

  
“Nick was part of my ‘toeing Daddy’s line’ phase,” admitted Veronica. “I liked him enough, back when I thought that was the kind of person I needed to marry to make a solid business partnership. Then I realised a killer business instinct might make a pretty dreadful person, as well. It was before I realised I wanted to reject that life, and all the people like Nick that came with it.”

  
“God, V, dating sounds awful.”

  
“Can you believe this?” said Veronica, laughing. “I can’t believe we’re in a cult, on another planet, probably going to die, and we still found time to break the Bechdel test. Oh! Speaking of which, I see the Serpents’ very own Flash Gordon is hovering. I’d better let you go; I’m sure if Nick can help to look for food, I can be useful somehow.”

  
“He’s not-” Betty started to protest, before giving up. She thought the enthusiastic football player Flash Gordon was a pretty poor comparison for Jughead (more like Archie, maybe), and she and Jughead weren’t-

  
Well. She ought to go and help with the barricades, anyway.

  
  
The barricades had clearly been constructed by the Farmies in a panic, with very little time; the weak points where the creatures had made their way through were obvious. Thankfully, Betty mused, the current occupants appeared to have a little more time to make repairs, and make the barricades a little more substantial. St Clair appeared to have been roped in by Cheryl, and he was pushing a cartload of supplies resentfully. JB skittered past, euphoric over having been reunited with a now much healthier Hot Dog, with her little arms full of med-kits. Betty was glad that Veronica’s sweet gesture had cheered Jellybean so much; the little girl had been through things no-one should go through, let alone as a child.

  
“For what it’s worth,” said Jughead, dropping his oxy-acetylene torch and testing the stability of the barricades.

  
“Great, what’s next?” said Betty, unfolding their printout of the Farm’s structure.

  
“Actually,” Jughead’s voice was embarrassed. “I want you to put this on.”

  
He handed her a wrist-device, emblazoned with the Serpents’ snake, this time double-headed like the one she’d seen on his and FP’s insignia.

  
“What’s it for?”

  
“It’s one of our locators. That way I can find you anywhere in the complex, same as the others.”

  
“Are you asking me to join the Serpents, Jug?” asked Betty teasingly. To her astonishment, Jughead flushed, and looked incredibly embarrassed. 

  
“It’s a precaution,” he said. “I’d just like to know that you’re safe. Alright, what’s next?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I wasn't going to continue with any fics, but frankly I'm almost turned on by the schadenfreude I've got from the musical episode being their worst reviewed and worst rated episode ever, and if they don't understand the appeal of their own characters? they don't get fucking monopoly on them. I'm not going to watch any more, but I sure am going to have fun writing shit. fuck your misogynist fantasies lol that's not the Betty Cooper of any other episode. (kinda can't believe a woman wrote that episode tho - I guess internalised misogyny is a thing? or she's just got to obey the main writer's orders. either way at least she's not ted or brian because that duo of nasty little boys can get fucked with their projecting on bland-ass white-bread archie).
> 
> also here is some fucking female friendship because we don't get any of that on the show and now 'friends don't kiss other friends' boyfriends' betty is apparently willing to fuck veronica over horrifically? fuck off, did you even watch your own show? the dreadfulness of their writing offends me.


	13. Plans within Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The situation gets worse; Betty finally manages to have a conversation with the other Serpents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> imagine if toni had a backstory
> 
> imagine if she hadn't immediately been presented as a threat to a straight ship, then had her bisexuality erased
> 
> imagine if the writers could write

“Jellybean, it’s time for you to sleep,” whispered Betty gently. The little girl had taken to clinging to almost everyone like a limpet (Veronica, after Hot Dog’s surgery; Cheryl, after she’d walked her around the complex and pretended that JB was an honorary Serpent; even Sweet Pea, who towered over Jellybean, had been surprisingly indulgent, hefting Jellybean on to his shoulders when they’d needed to climb over a particularly large piece of debris inside the Farm). It was Jughead and Betty she clung to the most, however, and she was reluctant to let either of them go out of her sight for long. 

  
Cheryl had made up a bed in the med-lab, which was easily the safest part of their little stronghold in the farm, determined that JB should have a nap. Betty put her little passenger down, and started tucking her into the sheets. 

  
“I don’t want to sleep,” admitted Jellybean, her voice quiet and ashamed. “I have scary dreams.”

  
“Well,” said Betty, trying to think what her mother had been like, if she or Polly or Charles had had scary dreams. To her memories, Alice had not been particularly sympathetic; but Polly had always been sweet, and left tiny Betty with her favourite toy, and a night light. “I’ll bet Hot Dog doesn’t have scary dreams, do you, Hot Dog?” 

  
Hot Dog apparently shook his head.

  
“Betty,” said Jellybean gravely. “Hot Dog doesn’t have scary dreams, because he’s just a stuffed animal.”

  
“Right,” said Betty, with a grin. “I’m sorry, JB.”

  
She pulled the space heater closer, trying to make her tiny charge as comfortable as possible. 

  
“Mom always said there were no monsters. No real ones,” whispered Jellybean, “but there are.”

  
“Yes,” said Betty. There was no point in patronising or trying to hide things from JB, as she’d just seen. “There are, aren’t there?” 

  
“Why do they tell us that?”

  
“Most of the time, it’s true.” Alice had certainly tried to hide the worst of the world from her children, but in the end she’d just ended up trying to hide her children from the world, hauling them out into space where nothing could get them, except the monsters that really waited out there in the cold, and the monsters that were inside their own ship.

  
“Did one of those things grow inside her, like a baby? Isn’t that how babies are made?”

  
“That’s very different,” said Betty, stricken. Polly had thought she was pregnant, once, and Alice and Hal had freaked out, threatened to send Jason off at the nearest possible base, but nothing had happened, in the end. She tried not to think about what had happened to Jason.

  
“Did you ever have a baby?”

  
“No,” said Betty. “I’m only seventeen, remember? But I had little cousins – Juniper and Dagwood – and my sister was thinking of having a baby one day.”

  
“You had a sister?”

  
“I had a big sister, and a big brother.”

  
“I had a big brother, too, my mom said,” said Jellybean excitedly, “but she wasn’t sure where he was, and she said it wasn’t okay for him to come with us round the colonies. I guess he was with my dad. She always said we’d go back and meet him, one day, but I guess we won’t now. Where’s your big brother? And your sister?”

  
“They’re gone,” said Betty faintly. They were long gone. She guessed they’d died nearly half a century before JB was even born.

  
“You mean dead.” Jellybean’s face was blank. She was even younger than Betty, and she’d seen so much death. Betty was reminded again, of how pointless it seemed to try to soften things for Jellybean. Suddenly, she couldn’t bear to think of it any more, how lost the two of them were, alone out here, and needed to feel like there was something anchoring them to reality.

  
“Here.” She wrapped the Serpent wrist band round Jellybean’s tiny wrist. “Take this. For luck.”

  
She reached up to switch the light off, and was abruptly met with a lap full of Jellybean.

  
“Don’t go.” The little voice was plaintive. “Please.”

  
“JB, I’m going to be right outside, okay? See the camera, right up there? Me and the Serpents can see you, all the time, to make sure you’re safe.”

  
She tucked Hot Dog more comfortably into Jellybean’s arms.

  
“I’m not going to leave you, JB,” she whispered. “I won’t.”

  
“You promise?” asked Jellybean, her voice equally faint.

  
“Cross my heart.”

  
“And hope to die?”

  
“And hope to die,” repeated Betty. Jellybean clutched her closer. “Sleep, JB. And don’t dream.”

She stepped out to find Veronica, Cheryl, Toni and Sweet Pea in med-lab, all staring in disgust at Archie’s dissected specimen.

  
“This thing’s disgusting, bro,” Archie was saying helpfully, poking at bits of ovipositor with a scalpel. He’d analysed it far more thoroughly than Hal had, back with Jason’s little friend on the Riverdale, although Betty supposed that wasn’t surprising. 

  
Archie had found out enough to reel off a list of information about the thing, most of it meaningless to anyone who wasn’t a xenobiologist (which was all of his audience).

  
“That’s very interesting, Archiekins,” purred Veronica, although her repulsed face belied her flirtatious tone. Archie seemed delighted by Veronica’s apparent interest, and prepared to tell them more about molecular acid.

  
“…it doesn’t tell us much, Arch, does it, if we’re trying to figure out what we’re dealing with here,” interrupted Betty, trying to be gentle, rather than frustrated. “Can we go over its behaviour again? They grab the Farmies, they move them over there and they immobilise them to be… hosts… for more of these.”

  
One of the creatures in the tanks waved its spindly legs at Cheryl, who shot it a disgusted look.

  
“I won’t be intimidated by a penis on legs,” she snapped at it.

  
“There would have to be a lot of them, right? One for each Farmie,” said Betty.

  
“Over a hundred,” sighed Toni.

  
“Yeah, man, that follows,” said Archie enthusiastically. 

  
“And each one of these things comes from an egg, right?” said Betty.

  
“I see that, B.” Veronica shivered with nausea. “Who- what’s laying the eggs, then?”

  
They all looked at Archie, who gestured helplessly in response. 

  
“I’m not sure,” he admitted, bashful. “It must be something we haven’t seen yet. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, guys.” 

  
“Maybe it’s like an ant-hive,” said Sweet Pea, hunching his shoulders.

  
“Bees, Sweets, bees have hives,” corrected Toni. Toni, unlike Cheryl, who was lounging ostentatiously on a bench, was still on her feet, her fingers never leaving her pulse rifle. She kept checking the door, ready to react at a moment’s notice.

  
“You know what I mean.” Sweet Pea was scowling in thought, wracking his brains. “We always kept insect colonies back on my rock, to try and encourage a natural ecosystem for gardening and shit. They always had, like, one big female in charge.”

  
“The queen, bro,” interjected Archie.

  
“Yeah, that one, and she’s huge, man, I mean big.” Sweet Pea gestured a couple of inches long with his fingers.

  
“They’re not ants, you Neanderthal,” snapped Cheryl.

  
“I know that!”

  
“Archie,” said Betty, before the Serpents could bicker any further, “I want these specimens destroyed as soon as you’re done with them, okay?”

  
“Oh,” said Archie. “That St Clair guy said they were to be kept alive in stasis for return to company labs.”

  
He glanced at Veronica guilelessly. Veronica blanched, and looked terribly guilty.

  
“They were very specific about it.”

Jughead could hear yelling, although he wasn’t prepared to leave his post.

  
“Did you know your father’s company was trying to transport these things?!” he heard Betty snap. She sounded very much as if she could handle herself, anyway.

  
“Of course not!” That was Veronica. “I mean, I thought maybe-”

  
“How many times have you said you wanted nothing to do with this, and then you turn around and stab me – all of us – in the back?!”

  
“Look, Elizabeth, these two specimens are worth billions to the bio-weapons division, how were we supposed to ignore that?” St Clair was as smarmy as ever, that braying voice and patronising tone jarring Jughead’s nerves even from another room. “If you’re smart, all of us can come out of this as heroes, and you can be set up for life.”

  
“You’re insane!” snapped Betty. “You think you can get those things through quarantine?”

  
“How can they impound it if they don’t know about it?”

  
“But they will know about it, Nick, from me.” _And the Serpents_ , thought Jughead defiantly. _Sneer at us from a jail cell, you over-privileged motherfucker_. “Just like you were responsible for the deaths of a hundred and fifty-seven members of the Farm.”

  
“What?!” gasped Veronica.

  
 _What?_! thought Jughead. Betty was explaining how she’d found the records, seen the directive, directly from Nick St Clair, that sent the Farmies out looking for the ship. How St Clair hadn’t warned them what he’d sent them to look for; how all of them, barring Jellybean, had died so he could try to turn a profit. Nick tried to protest; tried to explain himself, that it was only to preserve their chance at the money from the find, that it was only a mistake.

  
Betty clearly wasn’t having any of it.

  
“These people are dead, St Clair!” There was a thud. He hoped it was Betty hurling St Clair against a wall. “You left Jellybean an orphan! Don’t you have any idea what you’ve done? I’m gonna make sure they nail you right to the wall, right to the wall!”

  
“Miss Cooper,” St Clair’s voice sounded choked, “I thought you would be smarter than this.”

  
“Well,” Betty hissed, “I’m happy to disappoint you.”

  
The sound of Betty’s trainers storming towards him reached his ears, and he looked more attentively at the cameras, hoping Betty wouldn’t catch him eavesdropping.

  
“B, wait!”

  
That was Veronica, her ridiculous heels still clacking against the floors. 

  
“You promised me.” Betty’s voice was colder than he’d ever heard it. “You promised me, that night when we decided to come here, that we were going to destroy them. That was my one condition, Veronica.”

  
“I didn’t know, then!” Veronica sounded genuinely remorseful. “I just thought, once we were here… I thought we could take them back to study. Find some easier way of stopping them than all of this, B! I thought Nick was right!”

  
“You’ve seen what they do to people, Veronica! You saw, back in the atmosphere processor!”

  
“I just thought- People are going to try to find them, B, I thought we could stop it by finding some way to neutralise them-”

  
“You could’ve told Nick St Clair to stop. You could’ve told all of us the truth, and instead you just played us like fools!”

  
“No!” pleaded Veronica. “I was just trying to stop my father taking advantage of it, Betty, you have to believe me!”

  
“No,” interrupted Betty coldly. “Even if I did, I can’t trust you, V.”

  
There was silence, and then Betty appeared in Ops, blatantly fuming. Veronica did not follow her.

“Did you hear that?” Betty asked, turning to Jughead.

  
“Uh,” said Jughead, aware that he had no beanie to hide the bright red tips of his ears. “Yeah.”

  
“Good,” said Betty defiantly. “Do you think we should take them back to Earth to study? Do you think I’m being hysterical to demand that all those creatures burn in hell right here?”

  
“No,” said Jughead. “For a start I don’t think I’d call anyone here that, except maybe Sweet Pea a few hours ago. And even if I thought St Clair had a point – which I don’t, I think he’s a money-grabbing scumbag profiting off misfortune like all his kind – your word would be good enough for me. So, as far as I’m concerned, the nuking plan still stands.”

  
Betty smiled gratefully at him. She looked terribly, terribly tired. 

A few hours passed. 

  
The creatures came for them. It only took them a few minutes to drain the first set of guns, and then they were at the pressure door into the Farm. A few sheets of metal stood between them and the survivors, then another set of guns, and then nothing.

  
Seventeen days was a very long time.

  
Betty wondered how many of the hundred and fifty-seven creatures were left; a hundred and fifty-seven for the Farmies. 

  
Oh, and two more, for the kind, friendly Keller, and for Jughead’s father.

  
A hundred and fifty-nine, then.

  
It got worse.

  
Archie opened the storm shutters, and pointed out at the towering structure of the atmosphere processor. Veronica stood alongside him, silent and drawn. Betty couldn’t even face looking at her yet; the betrayal was too fresh in her mind, filling her mouth with sour acid. She was glad that Veronica still had Archie to talk to, though, since no-one here deserved to feel completely alone.

Well, Nick St Clair could sit next to Doiley’s unconscious body and think about the years he was going to spend alone in a fucking prison cell.

  
“It’s very pretty, Archie, but what are we looking for?” Betty asked. Archie told her to wait for a moment, and then pointed. A plume of – glowing smoke? Gas? – burst from the processor, drifting into the sky. 

  
“Emergency venting, guys,” said Archie sadly. Sweet Pea growled wordlessly, and stalked away.

  
“How long till it blows?” asked Jughead. He sounded terribly resigned; their run of bad luck, from an incompetent officer through to the dropship crash, didn’t seem to be letting up.

  
“Four hours,” said Archie.

  
That was that then. Suddenly, the seventeen day wait seemed a lot less of a problem; their rescue team would arrive to find nothing but an irradiated wasteland, and the _Whyte Wyrm_ , abandoned in orbit. 

  
“Four more weeks, and I was out!” growled Sweet Pea. “Oh, man.”

  
Wordlessly, Toni closed the shutters.

  
“We can’t shut it down from here, then?” asked Betty. Archie shook his head.

  
“Too much damage,” he said. “There’s no way to stop it, bro. It’s inimitable.”

  
“Inevitable, Archiekins,” murmured Veronica absently.

  
“Oh man, I was getting short!”

  
“SP, give it a break!” demanded Toni. 

  
“Get a grip!” snapped Cheryl simultaneously.

  
Betty ignored the bickering Serpents. Jughead was still silent, contemplating their hopeless situation bleakly. Of course, he was feeling responsible for this, even though there was nothing he could have done to prevent any of it. 

  
So. There was nothing they could do on the surface. 

  
“We’ve got to get the other dropship from the _Whyte Wyrm_ ,” said Betty, far more confidently than she felt. “You guys must have had some way of bringing it down on remote.”

  
“No,” barked Sweet Pea. “It’s fucked, Cooper!”

  
“The transmitter was on the APC,” clarified Cheryl, infuriated. “We couldn’t retrieve it from the crash site.”

  
“Why the hell did Doiley not leave even one person on the ship?” gasped Veronica. “I know he was over confident, but that’s insane!”

  
“You don’t have to tell me that!” snapped Cheryl. “I know that a lot better than you, Veronica!”

  
Betty started to lose her temper at the useless squabbling.

  
“Well, then we better think of something, Sweet Pea, we better think of a way-”

  
“Think of what, Princess? We’re fucked! We’re doomed!”

  
“Shut up!” barked Jughead, surprising them all. He calmed quickly, but he fixed Betty with an intense stare. “What about the colony transmitters? The up-link tower at the other end?”

  
“Dude, the wires between here and there are damaged,” said Archie. “I already checked, man, it won’t work. Can’t align that dish.”

  
“Well, somebody’s going to have to go out there, take a portable terminal and patch in manually.” Betty rubbed her temples, resisting the urge to press her nails into her palms. She was pretty sure she could do it, if she really had to, but God, couldn’t it be someone else’s turn?

  
“Oh, yeah, sure, go out there with those things running around? You can count me out,” said Sweet Pea. Of course, the guy who was best with computers wouldn’t risk it.

  
“I guess we can just count you out of everything then?” said Jughead nastily.

  
“I’ll go,” said Archie quietly. “I’ll go, guys.”

  
“What?!” said Veronica, horrified. “Archie, no!”

  
“I’ll go,” repeated Archie, that sweet smile covering his face. “Can’t let you guys risk it, can I? They can’t lay an egg in me. And I’m sure I can work out how to remote pilot the ship.”

  
“No,” said Cheryl sharply. “Andrews, there’s a lot of things you’re good at, in your own little way, but I’m the only one of you bozos qualified to remote-pilot the ship. Count me in, chum.”

  
“Baby.” Toni lowered her gun, and stepped towards Cheryl. “It’s too dangerous! We can stay in here and wait for Andrews-”

  
“Toni, if I don’t go, none of us will get out of here.” Cheryl caressed Toni’s face gently. Betty looked away, not wanting to intrude.

  
“I love you,” said Cheryl brokenly. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. And I’d happily risk my life to save you – save all of us.”

  
Toni kissed her palm, tears trembling in her eyes, and leaned forward to press her lips against Cheryl’s.

  
“You are sensational,” she whispered.

There was a pipe that led to the uplink towers, just big enough for a human (or an artificial person to crawl through). Betty was helping Archie to cut an entrance into the pipe, while Cheryl and Toni cradled one another, whispering promises and goodbyes.

  
The timing would be close.

  
Archie clambered into the pipe, refusing Toni’s offer of a gun.

  
“What would I do with it?” he asked, and slid inside. Cheryl, by contrast, had several pistols strapped to her. Betty wished her luck. Cheryl flashed Betty an insincere grin, and then turned to Toni.

  
“I love you,” she said again, a manic smile covering her face.

  
“I love you, too.” Toni gave her another lingering kiss. “You’re taking my heart with you.” 

  
“I’ll try to keep it safe,” whispered Cheryl. She took a deep breath, and clambered into the pipe.

  
Toni sniffed, and started to seal the gap.

  
“I’m sorry, Toni,” said Betty hopelessly. “I’m so sorry any of you are here, in danger.”

  
“We’re always in danger, Princess,” said Toni, bitterly, “but it’s not your fault. Cheryl chose this. I chose this. I just wish we hadn’t had such a little prick as our CO. If it’d just been FP Junior, now, maybe- But that’s a waste of time, thinking like that. Guess FP III and you are gonna have to be our best bet.”

  
“FP III… Is that Jughead?”

  
Toni snorted.

  
“That’s him,” she said. “Straight men naming their sons, huh? Don’t blame him picking that nickname. Colony kids like us get named weird shit all the time.”

  
“Were you a colony kid?” asked Betty, as they worked. “The colony thing wasn’t as big when I left Earth before.”

  
“That’s right, you were on ice a long time, weren’t you? Yeah,” said Toni, working briskly and methodically across the panel. “Yeah, most of the marines are colony kids, running away from their colonies, back to Earth. And the other few are Earth kids, running way from something there. Like Cheryl, her family didn’t like her being gay, wanted her to marry a guy and join the family business, so she ran as far away from them as she could get, and ended up trying to save lives out here.”

  
“But what about you, Toni?” asked Betty. “I get Cheryl; but most of you guys are so young. What makes you do this? What makes you join the Marines?”

  
“It’s a job, Betty,” said Toni. She seemed patient, but irritated. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but people like me, like Sweets, like Jughead, we get born into poverty on colony worlds and most of us die in poverty on colony worlds. My parents died; my uncle didn’t want me. They expect us to stay there, have more fucking poor kids, keep the cycle going until one day, maybe, it’ll be an okay place to live. Well, it’s not worth it. The supply cartels, they keep you down; Earth authorities kick the shit out of you if you try to form a union to make your lives better. We’re just there to be exploited. So why not be exploited in the Marines? At least there’s a paycheck and the few of you who survive get to retire on Earth. Okay? Does that make sense?”

  
“I wasn’t trying to judge you, Toni, I just-”

  
“It’s okay,” said Toni. She clapped Betty’s shoulder warmly. “You’re doing your best, and it’s going better than can be said for half the people here. Come on; no point waiting here. My girl will get us out of this.”

  
Below them, the pipe stretched out into the dark emptiness of LV-426’s surface. Archie and Cheryl had a long way to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canon ended at 4x16 and you can't convince me otherwise
> 
> anything else is genuinely bullshit that makes no sense
> 
> what's more it's fucking hilarious that the reviewers agree


	14. You're ready to rock and roll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are running out of time, all too rapidly, and Betty and Jughead both yearn for just a little longer together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's the last bit of the calm before the storm, guys, it's going to kick the fuck off after this

Within a few minutes of Cheryl and Archie leaving, the sound of the robot sentries was echoing around the Farm again. Betty and Toni exchanged a look, and pelted for the operations room.

Jughead and Sweet Pea were watching the guns drain in horror, swearing as the relentless assault continued. It was only a minute before the guns were almost emptied.

“Fuck!” said Jughead, leaping to his feet with his pulse rifle. He looked at Betty, wanting to say something meaningful, like _I love you? I think I could have loved you, if we’d had more time, if we’d been somewhere other than here, and sometimes I think you might have loved me too_ ; but it was pointless, and telling her something like that before he died to delay her death by a few minutes would just be cruel. 

Instead, Betty’s hand clutched his arm.

“Wait!” she gasped. “Look. They’re retreating.”

She was right. The creatures were disappearing from the screens, apparently finally dissuaded by the guns, which had all of ten rounds left. 

“You’re right,” breathed Jughead disbelievingly. He lowered his gun. Behind him, Sweet Pea and Toni did the same. “Next time, they come right up and knock.”

“Yeah, but they don’t know that,” said Betty, relief making her shoulders sag. “We have a little more time.”

“Maybe we got ‘em demoralised,” spat Sweet Pea. Toni told him to shut up.

“I want you two walking perimeter,” said Jughead, his calm demeanour returning.

“No way, Jones, we’re freaking out!” 

“Keep it together, Sweet Pea,” hissed Jughead. Toni nodded, but she and Sweet Pea clearly didn’t look happy. “Listen. We’re all in this mess, okay, I just need you to stay careful, please. We can’t afford to let even one of those bastards into the Farm.”

“Hmph,” said Sweet Pea, but he looked less mutinous. Toni squared her shoulders, and hefted her pulse rifle. She looked at Betty, who was leaning against one of the tables, looking blank.

“We’ll keep watch, Jones,” she said evenly. “C’mon, Sweets.”

The duo left the room, heading off on the first watch. Jughead looked at Betty, lowered his gun, and made his way over to her.

“Are you okay?” he asked, trying to keep his voice gentle. God, she’d only come here because Doiley and the St Clair prick promised her she wouldn’t be in any danger, and now she was maybe even worse off that she had been back on the Riverdale. “How long has it been since you got any sleep?”

“Jughead,” said Betty bleakly. “I’m not going to end up like those others.” Those wide green eyes flicked slowly up to meet his. “You’ll take care of it, won’t you?”

_No_ , thought Jughead. _I’m going to die to get you out of here. Please don’t think that; I want you to be safe, and happy, and far away from any of this. I want to protect you, not hurt you._

But he couldn’t patronise her like that.

“If it comes to that, Betty,” he said, “I’ll take care of us both.”

_What a strange parody of a proposal,_ he thought. He wanted to tell her that he thought she was beautiful, brilliant; instead the best thing he could offer her was a swift, painless end alongside him.

_Til death do us part_.

“Listen,” he said hurriedly, before he could get any more demoralised. “Let’s just make sure it doesn’t come to that, all right?”

Betty managed a smile.

"All right,” she repeated. 

Maybe he could give them both something like a fighting chance.

“Hey, I want to introduce you to a personal friend of mine,” he said. He swung his pulse rifle up, reeling off a list of its specifications. Betty seemed taken aback, but she listened keenly. 

“Okay,” breathed Betty shakily, looking at the rifle, and then back up at him. “What do I do?”

Betty had never been more embarrassed, excited, or turned on in her life.

Teaching someone to shoot with one of the pulse rifles, it seemed, required them to be at extremely close quarters. Jughead had positioned her; he’d moved her feet, grasped her hips to adjust her stance, and he’d wrapped his arms around her to show her where the rifle sat comfortably.

_I wish we had the time for you to hold my hips properly_ , thought Betty, her chest hurting at the longing. She was seventeen (eighty-four, whatever), had spent most of her teenage years in space, and hadn’t had much of a chance to spend time with young men who weren’t either in her gene pool, or sleeping with people in her gene pool. It was such an embarrassing, horrendously stereotypical situation to find herself in – a terrible, consuming crush on the first young man that she met.

But he was kind, and sweet to Jellybean, and competent. He wasn’t being patronising. He was trying his utmost to keep them all safe, and clearly keeping a distance between their bodies while she wished he wouldn’t.

“Pull it in tight right here,” said Jughead, adjusting her shoulder. She kind of wished he’d pull her in tight to his chest. 

“Right.”

“Lean in to it.”

“Okay, now it will kick some.” He explained how to re-load the gun, still guiding her hands, until she could practice it herself.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a grenade launcher, I don’t think you wanna mess with that.”

“You started this, show me everything,” Betty teased. “I can handle myself.”

“Yeah,” said Jughead, his voice sounding strangled. “I noticed.”

He showed her how to load and fire the grenade launcher, always calm, his hands always hovering just shy of a caress on her skin. Betty practiced, again and again, until the movement felt utterly natural.

“Is there anything else you can show me?” she asked. She was desperate for their quiet little interlude to last longer; she wanted to stay with him in this quiet room, pretending that she was just talking to (flirting with?) a boy she liked, instead of a desperate attempt at training to save her life. 

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt close to anyone at all. Veronica was great, sure, but there was always that level of disconnect, of Veronica’s implausibly privileged upbringing sixty years after Betty’s more rocky start. She wasn’t feeling particularly close to Veronica ust at the moment, either. Jughead, on the other hand, seemed to just understand her; understand what it felt like, to go through the kind of things she’d been through.

“Not really, Betty,” Jughead said. He sounded reluctant; Betty hoped he sounded reluctant. “Is there anything else you can think of? Anything else you want to ask me?”

Betty thought quietly. The first time she’d felt really close to him, and that maybe he’d felt it too, was when they’d first entered the Farm. He’d been struck by the resemblance to his childhood home, and they’d shared a moment in the wreckage, quiet and lonely together.

“What did you do to become a Serpent, Jug?” she asked quietly. 

Jughead stared at Betty, who seemed to steel herself, then reach forward, and took his hands.

“Earlier,” she said. “In the dropship. You don’t have to tell me. I was talking to Toni before, about the Serpents, and… I won’t judge. I just want to know you.”

Jughead exhaled, and sat on the bench. He put down his pulse rifle, for what felt like the first time since they’d got back from the APC.

“It isn’t that bad, really, in perspective,” he admitted. “I… You’re seventeen, right?”

“Seventeen, eighty-four, let’s not argue,” said Betty brightly. God, she looked good in the brief moments when she was happy. Jughead wished she had more of them.

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” he said. “Legally, I’m twenty-one, right?”

“Okay.”

"When my dad left, I was thirteen. I lasted maybe a year on Southside, alone, mostly inside but sometimes rough. Have you ever tried to sleep rough, when the air is thin?”

“No,” said Betty. “I’ve never slept rough, Jug.”

“It’s like waking up with the worst hangover, except you haven’t been drinking, you haven’t slept, your head hurts, and you can’t breathe, Betty, you can’t believe how much it hurts.”

Betty listened to him, silent, still grasping his hands.

“So the next year,” said Jughead. “When the recruiters turned up, I signed up straight away.”

“But you were-”

“Fourteen,” said Jughead. “Yeah. I took all the money left from what my dad sent me, and I went- Betty, I went to get an ID with a new name, that said I was eighteen, so I could get out of there.”

“What’s so bad about that, Jughead?”

“The person I paid,” said Jughead bleakly. “She was so… she ran one of the cartels out there, Betty, she sold drugs, she bought people’s lives, and I just… I just wanted to be out of there so bad, Betty, I didn’t care who I was making a deal with.”

“So you’re-”

“Eighteen,” said Jughead, “and I got out by giving money to someone who made everyone else on Southside’s life worse. I couldn’t tell anyone, Betty, I was so ashamed.”

Betty stood up, and tugged him closer to her.

“Jughead,” she said. “Jughead, you were a kid. You were going to die. How could I blame you? How could anyone blame you? You saw my report- You saw what I did to survive, what my family did-”

She started wincing with the effort of holding in her tears. Jughead wanted to gather her up in his arms, but restrained himself, instead grasping her shoulders.

“Betty,” he said helplessly. “Betty- I-”

But then she was kissing him.

Betty reached up, cradled Jughead’s face, and pressed her lips against his. He was still, just for a moment, and then he was kissing her back, those lips she’d tried not to think about pressing into hers desperately. 

“This is awful,” he gasped, before kissing her again. “I’m kissing a crying girl – you’re vulnerable.” He nipped at her lower lip. “I’m supposed to be protecting you. We’re going to die here- ”

“I don’t care,” whispered Betty. “I really like you, Jughead.”

“I really like you,” Jughead echoed, smiling a surprisingly sweet smile at her, and then kissed her harder, clutching her hips the way she’d wanted him to earlier. “I haven’t even-” He started kissing along her jaw. “I don’t do this. I haven’t even wanted to kiss someone before I met you.”

“I like you so much,” breathed Betty. Jughead slid his hands under her legs, picking her up and dropping her on to the bench, pressing between her legs. “I’ve never kissed anyone before, either.”

She inclined her head, as Jughead carried on nipping down her neck. Her hands couldn’t quite decide where they felt best; was it combing through his dark, thick hair? Gripping his back? No, his stupid armour was in the way, stupid life-saving armour, didn’t it understand that they were trying to kiss? Maybe she could grab his ass, but he was kind of tall, he was grabbing her ass and it felt great, maybe he’d like that-

“I want to be close to you,” gasped Jughead, sliding back up her neck to press another kiss against her mouth, his tongue lingering in her mouth. “I just want-”

“Please,” whispered Betty. His hands were moving slowly up her sides again, dipping under the sides of her dungarees, sliding under her t-shirt – they felt so good; surely he’d like that too, maybe if she could get the buckles on his armour undone-

The corridor echoed with the sound of Sweet Pea’s boots, stomping back towards them. Jughead leapt back, struggling to disentangle his hands from Betty’s clothes, and grabbed his pulse rifle, as if their interlude had never taken place.

“You okay in here, boss?” called Sweet Pea.

“Yeah,” said Jughead. His voice was completely strangled. “You and Toni pick up anything?”

“Nah. We’ll keep walking, though.”

“Great!”

Betty started righting her clothes. Evidently they were going to pretend that it hadn’t happened. It was going to be a brief, sweet moment of connection, before-

“Betty,” said Jughead. “C’mere.”

He opened his arms, and Betty sunk into his hug.

“This is the worst possible timing,” she murmured, into his chest.

“Yeah,” said Jughead, pressing a kiss against her forehead. “It’s fucking terrible.”

He took her chin, and lifted her face up to look at him.

“And that’s why we’re gonna get out of here,” he said. “We’re gonna take Jellybean, and the others, and we’re gonna get up to the _Whyte Wyrm_ , and nuke the fuckers, and then… I guess we’ve got a lot to look forward too, right?”

“Are you pulling delayed gratification on me, Juggie?” Betty giggled, and looked up at him. Luckily, he seemed softened by the nickname. “You should know, I don’t think it works.”

“Yeah, it seems I’d prefer to delay it as little as possible,” said Jughead, sounding surprised. “But I think it’s not… a great… idea, right now?”

Betty nodded reluctantly. Sweet Pea had probably done them a favour by interrupting them; sex would be a great distraction (she hoped), but they couldn’t really afford to be distracted right now.

“I should be checking on Jellybean,” she said. “I can see her on the cameras, but I want to know she’s okay.”

“You should get some sleep,” suggested Jughead. Hesitantly, he started stroking her hair.

“What about you?”

“I’m used to it,” he said, “And I want to be ready as soon as the dropship’s here. I promise I’ll wake you.”

Betty detached herself from him.

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said.

Dilton Doiley appeared to be awake, staggering along the corridor next to a Nick St Clair who was silent, but not showing any signs of remorse. Veronica was in med-lab; she looked up from rolling bandages, ready to say something to Betty, and then blanched, hurrying out of the room.

“How do you feel?” Betty asked, her inner Alice refusing to let her drop the very last of her manners.

“All right, I guess,” said Doiley. “Listen, Cooper-”

“Forget it,” said Betty, and walked past him. Apparently even her inner Alice had no time for the idiot whose gung-ho attitude had got them most of the way into this mess.

In the dark, silent med-lab anteroom, JB was nowhere to be seen. Betty had a moment of panic – _this is your fault, you kissed a boy and now something terrible has happened_ , said another Alice, who’d lectured her about what a bad idea sex was – but then she saw the light from the little heater under the bed. All of her inner Alices could absolutely fuck off. 

Jellybean was curled up into a little ball, safe in the warm space under the bed. Betty grinned, put her rifle on the bed where she could reach it if she needed it, and crawled under the bed herself. She wrapped her arms around Jellybean, who protested a little, squirming as Betty got comfortable. Soon, it was warm and still, and Betty felt safe, her eyes closing almost before she realised it. When Jughead came to wake them up, the dropship would be here to take them to safety.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHY DO THEY ALWAYS GET INTERRUPTED HUH?
> 
> WHY
> 
> they would've totally banged if it were more logistically feasible, fucking cockblocking aliens.


	15. The Beginning of the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They only have a few hours left; how could it possibly get any worse?
> 
> It gets worse.  
> Again.

“There is an explanation for all of this, you know, honey.”

  
Hal’s voice startles Betty out of her horrified reverie, and she leaps out of her seat to stare at her dad. Her father, who loves her, who taught her how to properly maintain a ship, who nurtured her interest in writing, who picked her up when she was little and defended her against some of Alice’s harsher edicts.

  
Her dad, who has tried his best to get his wife and children killed.

  
“Why, dad?” she gasps, desperately. Tears are trickling down her face now, her breath coming out in horrible, gasping chokes. Her father simply looks at her, his face placid and contemplative, as if Betty hadn’t found out that he let the creature aboard on purpose, he hadn’t endangered them all. He refused to put Jason in stasis. He tried to protect the creature. He’s already cost Jason, Chic and Alice their lives. He will happily watch his children die to protect it.

  
PRIORITY ONE, ETHL said. ENSURE RETURN OF ORGANISM FOR ANALYSIS. ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS SECONDARY. CREW EXPENDABLE.

  
Betty storms off to find her siblings. Her mind keeps screaming secondary, crew expendable, and for a moment she doesn’t realise what’s happening when the door shuts in front of her and won’t open. She smacks the button to release it, and then hurries to the other exit.

  
It closes in front of her.

  
“Dad,” she says calmly. “Open the door.”

  
Her father is motionless.

  
Betty tries to get past him, and he grabs her ponytail, swinging her down into the table. Betty screams, crawling away from him, but he follows her, grabbing her by the waist and hurling her into the wall. Her head smacks against it, and everything blurs. 

  
In her hazy state, Betty can see her father standing over her, still calm and emotionless. He picks her up, as if she were still a child, and places her gently on the bed in his alcove.

  
Slowly, he places his hands around her neck, and starts to squeeze. Betty wakes, groping for his arms, trying to break his hold on her, but her father is too strong, and her arms are already weak from the blow to her head. Her vision gets spottier and spottier, and she thinks _oh God, it’s not even the creature, Dad’s going to kill me and Charles and Polly will never know._

  
Hal is thrown back, suddenly, and Polly appears, curls herself over Betty protectively. Charles has Hal in a stranglehold, but Hal is too strong, spinning around and grabbing his son by the chest so Charles screams in pain. 

  
“Polly!” yells Charles. Polly is cradling Betty, as her little sister still gasps for breath. “Polly, help me!”

  
Polly hurtles over, grabs the first thing she can find – a knife from the table, screams, and plunges it into their father’s back. Hal roars, thrashes, and then slumps over Charles.

  
“Oh God,” pants Charles. “Oh God.”

  
Blood gurgles in Hal’s lungs. Betty chokes, and Polly sobs. 

“I admire its purity,” their father tells them later, choking on his own blood. There is no way to save him, but Betty has tried to make him comfortable. She barely knows why; Polly did what she had to do, and now their father is not actively working against them, maybe they can find some way to survive.

  
The order to protect the creature at the expense of his family’s lives drove their father mad. He was willing to kill all of them, so the company could have the creature, so Polly has killed him, even if he is dying slowly.

  
They are orphans, at their own hand, alone with the creature.

* * *

Betty startled awake from her dream of her father’s death. 

  
She wasn’t sure what had woken her, although it clearly wasn’t Jughead coming to let her know that Archie and Cheryl had returned with the dropship. The room was still dark, and Jellybean was still curled up into a ball in her arms. Betty yawned, and wondered if she could go back to sleep.

  
Something moved, and Betty’s eyes focussed on the specimen tubes, lying empty on the floor.

  
_oh god oh god oh god oh god_

  
“JB,” she whispered. “JB, wake up, we’re in trouble!”

  
Jellybean startled awake, whimpering slightly. How could this have happened? Fuck, at least she thought she could keep Jellybean safe in here, and now they were probably in more danger than Sweet Pea and Toni walking perimeter.

  
At least this time Betty had a gun, and could shoot the little bastards. They could melt through all the floors they liked; there was no hull for them to pierce here. She reached up on to the bed, where she’d left the pulse rifle.

  
It wasn’t there. She felt around up there, unable to believe that it was really gone, thinking surely it must be just out of reach, but it was definitely gone. Betty sat up, wondering if she had left it somewhere else in the room, and just imagined putting it within arm’s reach.

  
Something flew at her face, and she ducked, slamming the bed between her and the creature. Jellybean screamed, as those spindly fingers and awful, curling tail reached for them.

  
“Move, Jelly!” Betty leapt to her feet, hurling the bed over to trap the creature. She and Jellybean hurtled to the door, and she smacked the button to release it.

  
The door refused to open. Of course it did. As she and Jellybean tried desperately, with all the force that a seventeen-year-old and an eight-year old could, to open the doors, she caught a glimpse of movement, as the creature slithered away into the room.

  
Betty hauled JB away from the door, and started smacking on the window, screaming for help. Of course, they were in the most secure room remaining in the complex; that was why they’d put Jellybean in here in the first place, it was the hardest place to get into.

  
Or out of.

  
There was her pulse rifle, lying useless on a table, just outside the room.

  
“Jughead!” screamed Betty, waving at the cameras, hoping that Jughead hadn’t left his post in Ops, and was keeping watch over them. “Jughead, help!”

  
The flashing red light of the camera blinked, and disappeared. Someone had switched it off.

  
_Motherfucker,_ thought Betty.

  
“Betty!” screamed Jellybean. “Break the glass!”

  
“Oh,” gasped Betty. “Yes!”

  
She hefted a chair, and slammed it against the plexiglass window of the med-lab. The flimsy chair did nothing. She tried again, and gasped in pain as the force of the useless blow ricocheted down her arms. 

  
“Betty,” whimpered Jellybean. “I’m scared.”

  
“Me too, JB,” said Betty. There was no point in lying to the little girl. “Me too.”

  
There had to be something she could do. The cameras were off, the doors were locked, she had nothing on her that could stop the creatures…

  
“All creatures fear fire,” her father said.

  
“Always carry a lighter on you,” said Charles, many years earlier. “You never know when it’ll come in handy.”

  
She reached into her pocket, to find the little pink Zippo that Charles and Chic had had engraved for her sixteenth birthday. _Junior Mechanic Elizabeth Cooper, Riverdale_ , it said. Fifty-eight years ago, she’d been incredibly proud of it.

  
“Stay there, JB,” she whispered. Jellybean nodded, and pressed herself harder against the window, wide eyes searching for the creatures in the dark mess of the room.

  
Slowly, Betty crept across the room to the fire detectors.

  
Please don’t let them have thought of this, she thought, and flicked the lighter’s cap.

An alarm blared. Jughead leapt up; he’d spent a little while bringing Doiley up to speed, although Doiley appeared to have absolutely no desire to take his command back from Jughead, to Jughead’s relief and frustration. 

  
He checked the alarm location, hoping against hope that it wasn’t the creatures making their final assault, so shortly before Cheryl and Archie returned. 

“It’s the med-lab!” he said, heart in this throat, grabbing a fire extinguisher and racing out of the Ops room. “Sweets! Toni! Meet me in med-lab, we’ve got a fire!”

“On our way, boss!” came the response. 

A fire? Right now? That was the last fucking thing they needed. He’d felt safe, sending Jellybean and Betty there to rest, thinking it was the safest possible place, and now they were in danger again.

Doiley, astonishingly, was following him, clearly willing to help in any way possible.

Betty shrieked, as one of the creatures dropped through the sprinklers towards her neck, whipping its tail towards her. She hurled it away from her and Jellybean, slithering backwards and pushing every bit of furniture she could find between them and the creature. The sprinklers were confusing her, obscuring her sight, but she could hear the sound of skeletal legs skittering towards her.

  
It leapt for her, and she yelled, managing to get her arm between her face and its… ovipositor?... but that tail, that horrible vertebral scorpion tail, curled around her throat, and started to squeeze. The finger-legs were reaching for her, clawing towards her face, and her vision went spotty. Somewhere on the other side of the room, JB was screaming in terror, and there was nothing she could do to save either of them.

  
  
“Betty!” gasped Jughead, staring in horror at the scene on the other side of the glass. “Shoot it out!”

  
Sweet Pea and Toni responded instantly, firing at the plexiglass. With a jump, Jughead threw himself at the med-lab window, bursting through the shattered plexiglass to reach the girls. Sweet Pea was next through, heading straight for Jellybean, who screamed his name, her little arms braced to keep a table against the wall. The creature that wasn’t strangling Betty was reaching for Jellybean, tail trapped between the table and the wall, improbably arrested by Jellybean.

  
“Jesus Christ!” said Sweet Pea, swinging JB back and firing wildly at her tormentor.

  
Jughead had headed straight for Betty, grappling with the creature that had its tail wrapped around her neck. God, it was strong, threatening to crush Betty’s windpipe if they tried to pull it off without disentangling its victim first. Doiley had gripped the main body of the thing, abruptly showing signs of a backbone that had been absent earlier. Toni was behind Betty, trying to get a good grip on the tail. Jughead was supporting Betty’s back, praying that the thing wouldn’t break her neck in its flailing before they could free her.

  
Sweet Pea, slightly unhelpfully, was still shooting the one that had threatened JB.

  
With a wrench, Jughead got a good grip on the end of the tail, pulled it past Betty’s gasping jaw, and he and Toni wrestled it away from Betty’s neck. Betty gasped, great painful breaths entering her lungs. The thing’s tail whipped, searching for Jughead or Doiley, who tried to hold it still.

  
“Over there! Ready?!” yelled Jughead. 

  
“Yeah!” roared Toni, her rifle already focussed. Jughead and Doiley managed to hurl it across the room, and a single, controlled blast from Toni destroyed it completely.

  
For a moment, there was stillness, with only the sound of water falling from the sprinklers, and the faint hiss of the acid from the decomposing creatures. Jughead cradled Betty gently, pained by the excruciating sound of her breathing, but so, so grateful for it.

  
_Why did I try to keep her safe away from me_ , he thought.

  
“Betty! Jughead!” Jellybean flew across the room, into Jughead and Betty’s arms. Jughead held them both, gripping the back of Jellybean’s top as if he could protect her that way. God, he’d nearly lost both of them, both Betty and this precious little survivor.

  
“It’s clear, Jones,” said Sweet Pea. He was hovering protectively over the three of them, glancing between JB and the creature he’d killed. 

  
“Jesus,” breathed Jughead, clutching the two girls closer.

  
“St Clair and Veronica!” gasped Betty. “Get St Clair and Veronica.”

They held a kind of strange kangaroo court, the duo sitting in front of the rest of them. Veronica was pale, her hands twisting in front of her. St Clair simply looked bored. For a moment, Betty worried that Doiley might be more sympathetic to St Clair, but Doiley had his arms crossed, glaring at the corporate man with a face like thunder.

  
In reflection, Betty thought, she understood Dilton Doiley a little better. This had been something like his first command, with unfamiliar troops, and an assignment that sounded unusual and exciting. Had he been picked specifically for his inexperience? Had he, like the rest of them, been sent in as cannon fodder so that LGC could blame the disaster of this mission on an overenthusiastic, green junior officer?

  
Anyway, she didn’t blame him anymore. Instead, she was glaring at Nick St Clair; and she honestly didn’t know what to make of Veronica.

  
“I say we grease the rat-fuck son of a bitch right now,” said Sweet Pea, stepping up to St Clair. Apparently, he was taking the threat to JB and Betty’s lives very badly.

  
“It makes a strange kind of sense,” Jughead said, pacing. “I’ve almost figured it all out.” 

  
“He figured that he could get an alien back through quarantine,” said Betty, her voice sounding scratchy to her own ears. Jellybean was mute, curled up in Betty’s bomber jacket.

  
“If one of you was… impregnated,” added Jughead.

  
“Whatever you call it,” agreed Betty. “And then frozen for the trip home. No-one would know about the embryos we were carrying. …me and Jellybean.”

  
She thought of tiny Jellybean, her limbs flailing and falling still as one of those things ripped out of her, the way they had Jason and Jughead’s dad, and maybe JB’s mom too. 

  
Veronica released a sob.

  
“I’d never agree to that, B,” she pleaded. “I promise. I was going to have them destroyed after our fight. That was why I was in the med-lab earlier, trying to work out a safe way to do it from Archie’s notes! JB,” she said, turning to the little girl. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

  
St Clair was silent, glaring at all of them arrogantly.

  
“We’d all know about it,” said Jughead, ignoring Veronica. “What was going to happen to us?”

  
“St Clair knew you’d try to get us home, get us to a hospital so they could try to save our lives,” said Betty dully. “So he’d sabotage certain freezers on the way home. Namely all of the Serpents.” 

  
“Jettison the bodies. No-one would be alive to tell,” added Jughead.

  
“You can’t believe I’d let him do that!” snapped Veronica. “I made a mistake. I thought I could help. You can’t believe I’d really go along with this.”

  
“I don’t know what to think, Veronica,” said Betty coolly. “A few hours ago I would never have dreamed of it.”

  
“Fuck!” exploded Sweet Pea. “He’s dead. You’re fucking dead, St Clair.”

  
St Clair finally roused himself from his smug relaxation, and glared at Betty.

  
“This is so… nuts,” he said. “Why are you even listening to this girl? She’s seventeen. She’s had delusions that people were out to get her and her family since-”

  
“Since the company did the same thing to her, last time she encountered these creatures?!” Veronica rounded on him harshly. “Why don’t you admit it, Nicky? This is exactly the kind of thing you and my father would do. You just want your precious prize for the weapons division.”

  
“Veronica.” Nick smiled patronisingly. “I really thought at least you’d be able to see the reality of the situation here.”

  
Veronica leapt to her feet.

  
“The reality is,” she spat, “You’re an asshole, Nick. I should never have listened to you when you told me you wanted the specimens to find a means of stopping them. I can’t believe I was so stupid as to fall for that.”

  
“This is paranoid delusion,” said Nick, although he was finally beginning to sweat, seeing that he had no allies left. “It’s… it’s really sad, actually.”

“You know, I don’t know which species is worse,” said Betty calmly, stepping forward. “You don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddamned percentage.”

St Clair dropped his head into his hands.

  
“Let’s waste him,” said Toni. Sweet Pea clapped his hands, and aimed his rifle at St Clair. 

  
“No!” protested Betty, clutching at Jughead, who had moved forward to grab St Clair. “He’s gotta go back- We need proof-”

  
The lights went out.

  
A second later, the red emergency lights flickered on, and Betty realised what had happened.

“They cut the power,” she breathed, moving to grab Jellybean, and her rifle. Fucking St Clair. If he hadn’t decided that his money was more important than their survival, two of their rifles would still have a few more rounds.

  
“How the hell can they cut the power?” yelled Sweet Pea. “They’re animals!”

  
“I want you two walking the corridors with trackers, move!” ordered Jughead, not releasing his grip on St Clair’s collar. 

  
“Dilton, watch St Clair!”  
“I got it,” said Doiley bitterly, taking great pleasure in pressing a pistol to the base of Nick St Clair’s neck. For once, St Clair had lost his expression of uninterested smugness, and was actually looking afraid.

  
“Veronica…” Betty’s voice trailed off. Could she risk trusting Veronica? Veronica had had her moments of misguided naïveté, but in this case… she wanted desperately to believe Veronica that she had had nothing to do with the incident in the med-lab. 

  
“Jellybean,” she said eventually, unable to bring herself to risk it. Veronica looked sick with fear. If they made it out, then they could try to sort out what Veronica had done. “JB, stay close to me.”

  


The sound of the trackers was rhythmic, feeding from both Toni and Sweet Pea’s mikes. Jughead listened to it with growing fear, unable to think what to do if the creatures got in. 

“Anything?” asked Betty, jamming her own headset on.

  
“ _There’s something_.” Sweet Pea sounded terrified. Jughead would have given anything to hear the over-confident dickhead back to his usual self. “ _Uh, it’s inside the Farm_.”

  
“ _You’re just reading me_ ,” replied Toni calmly.

  
“ _No, it ain’t you. They’re inside, they’re inside the perimeter_!”

  
“Sweet Pea, stay cool!” ordered Betty. Jughead kind of wished she’d been in charge of them since leaving the goddamn space station. “Toni?”

  
Toni was silent, the pitch of her tracker rising.

  
“ _Sweet Pea may be right_ ,” she admitted, her voice low.

  
“Get back to Operations!” Jughead yelled. He grasped Betty’s hand, imploring her to be as strong as she could.

  
“JB,” she said, not breaking eye contact with Jughead. “Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nick st clair can get fucked in every universe amirite
> 
> but at the same time I wish riverdale would never try to tackle an assault plotline, ever.
> 
> or any plotline about humans and their feelings
> 
> pls bring back the gargoyle king, all is forgiven
> 
> smfh just wanted to watch attractive people solve mysteries


	16. Into the Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dropship arrives, too late for some of the survivors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4x17 negativity at the end

Jughead dragged Sweet Pea into Ops, and heaved the door closed, whipping the little sealing torch out before it was even closed. Toni was already working on the lower half of the door.

  
“Movement!” called Sweet Pea. “Signal’s clean. Range twenty metres.”

  
“They found a way in,” Jughead heard Betty say, sounding dejected. “Something we missed.”

  
“We didn’t miss anything!” shouted Jughead. 

  
“Eighteen… seventeen metres!”

  
“Something under the floor, not in the plans, I don’t know!” Betty sounded furious now, angry with herself for missing something. 

  
“Fifteen metres!”

  
“Definitely inside the barricades!” called Jughead, not willing to pause for even a moment. Fuck, fuck, what had they missed? 

  
“Betty,” Jellybean called, sounding scared. “Jughead, let’s go!”

  
“Thirteen!”

  
“That’s right outside the door, Jug, Toni, please get back!” pleaded Betty.

  
They finished sealing the door, and Toni and Jug leapt away, edging backwards through the room with their guns pointed at the door.

  
“Ten… Nine metres!”

  
“They’re right on us!” growled Toni.

  
“Remember, short controlled bursts,” breathed Jughead. He barely knew why he was telling them that; there was no way that four half-loaded guns, a few grenades and a couple of handguns were going to keep those fucking creatures away. Cheryl was going to come back too late for Toni, instead of Toni staying safe, and Cheryl dying outside. God, maybe Jughead should have just had sex with Betty earlier; maybe they could both have been happy for a few moments, before they died.

  
He wished he’d been able to get Jellybean out of here, at least. The little girl was still clinging to Betty, occasionally looking up at him with big, sad eyes.

  
“Eight metres! …seven… …six…”

  
“It can’t be, that’s inside the room!”

  
The door was clearly still intact, the room safe. Sweet Pea insisted that it was reading correctly. Betty swore, and checked her own motion tracker, as Sweet Pea continued his terrified countdown.   
Slowly, he saw Betty raise her head, and look at the ceiling.

  
“Give me the light!” snapped Jughead, leaping on to a table. 

  
He carefully stood, and started to push at one of the ceiling tiles with the nose of his rifle. Slowly, slowly, he lifted the tile, and looked up into the space above the ceiling.

  
It was awash with the motherfuckers.

  
With a scream, Jughead tumbled back off the table, panicking, firing his gun up at them. A section of the ceiling caved in, and suddenly there they were, a horde of the spiny bastards, all screeching and reaching for them.

  
_They want us alive_ , thought Jughead. He glanced at Betty and Jellybean, and a horrible part of his mind wondered if it was time to keep the deadly promise he’d made earlier. 

  
Then it was chaos.

  
  
They were all firing wildly; Doiley let go of St Clair, who disappeared, and started firing his handgun at the creatures. Even Veronica had picked up a handgun, and was firing into the mass of creatures.

  
“Get to medical!” Betty yelled, hoping that the room’s security might last them a little longer than the Ops room. She was already running, hauling Jellybean after her, when one of the Xenomorphs loomed up at them.

  
_Back into your shoulder – feet hip width apart – squeeze the trigger_ , Jughead-in-her-head said. Betty hefted the rifle, screamed, and fired. 

  
The thing was hurled back.

  
“Now!” Betty grabbed Jellybean, and dashed for the door to medical – which St Clair was already hauling closed in front of them. Betty ran harder, but it was too late, and she slammed against the cold metal of the locked door.

  
“St Clair!” she screamed, hammering on the door. “Open the door, goddamn you!”

“Let’s go, fall back!” yelled Jughead, attempting to follow Betty out to medical. He jumped off his table, darting past Toni, and back towards the corridor. Toni started edging backwards, still firing bursts into the crowd of creatures. Veronica and Doiley were already at the door, gathered with Betty, who seemed to be having some difficulty in getting it open.

  
“Die, motherfucker!” shouted Sweet Pea jubilantly, leaping up and down on the Ops table.

  
“Sweet Pea!” yelled Jughead, firing another burst. “Come on!”

  
“MOTHERFUCKER!” roared Sweet Pea, leaping from the desk and jumping in front of Jughead. He continued to hurl abuse at the creatures, even as he edged back, towards the med-lab. “You want some of this? Fuck you!”

  
The floor burst beneath him, and great oily claws grabbed at his feet. Sweet Pea screamed, and fired downwards, yelling in pain as the acid blood burned him.

  
“SP!” yelled Jughead, scrambling over with Toni, trying to grasp at Sweet Pea’s flailing arms.

  
“Jones- Jug,” begged Sweet Pea, “help!”

  
But it was too late, and Sweet Pea disappeared below. Jughead reached for him again – _I should shoot down there, can he survive the journey to the atmosphere processor? He deserves a kinder death_ – but Toni was hauling him back.

  
“Jones, he’s gone!” Toni bawled. “We need help with the door!”

  
She dragged Jughead to his feet, throwing him towards the med-lab door. Toni braced herself in the middle of the passageway, still firing into the horde.

  
“It’s locked!” yelled Betty, smacking her fists against the door. Who had locked-

  
_Fucking Nick St Clair_.

  
Jughead swore, and whipped the welding torch out, hoping that the lock could be forced that way. The sound of Toni changing from bullets to grenades was deafening, and made it hard to concentrate; but the door suddenly gave, and Betty hurtled through with Jellybean, Veronica and Doiley. Toni retreated, and Jughead leapt through, pulling the door closed and attempting to reseal the lock.

  
The next door was locked in front of them. Betty was already pounding on it with Doiley and Veronica, yelling at St Clair, who showed no signs of reappearing. The first door started to thud and shake, bowing from the creatures' assault on it. 

  
“Get back, get out of the way!” snapped Jughead, wrestling through the others to try and open the door.

  
“No!” said Jellybean suddenly. “This way!”

  
She dragged open the cover of the nearest air duct. Jughead glanced at it; it looked as if it might be big enough even for him to get through. The smaller women, Doiley and JB would be fine, and if he didn’t fit… 

  
Well, then, he didn’t fit.

  
“Juggie!” said Betty, meeting his eyes briefly, and she dove into the tunnel.

The tunnels were small enough to have saved JB for a few weeks, and Betty prayed that it might slow the creatures down enough for them to reach Cheryl and Archie at the landing field. It was almost big enough for her to stand in a crouch, lighting their way with a torch. She flickered it behind her; Doiley had shoved Jughead and Veronica through, and she thought she could see Toni behind Doiley.

  
“Which way is it to the landing field?” panted Betty.

  
“This way!” said Jellybean confidently, darting right. The tunnels were a maze, but Jellybean seemed to know her way without question. Betty ran as quickly as possible, bent nearly double to stay on her feet, hoping that the others were close enough behind them to follow her and JB and not lose their way.

  
Behind her, the blare of Toni’s rifle started again, and Betty knew that the tunnels had only given them the smallest of delays. Perhaps it could be enough, though.

  
“Straight ahead and left!” called Jellybean.

  
“Archie!” Betty heard Jughead yell. “Cheryl! Do you read me?”

  
“ _The ship is on its way, ETA sixteen minutes!_ ” replied Cheryl.

  
“We’re on our way!”

  
The sounds from the creatures got louder, the bursts of fire from Toni’s gun more frequent. Betty thought she could here Doiley yelling at her to move. Of course, he and Jughead were waiting to make sure that Toni got out. 

  
“It’s straight ahead!” said Jellybean gleefully, pointing to a duct in front of them. Jesus, they might actually make it.

  
“Jughead!” screamed Betty. “Jughead, Veronica, come on!”

  
Veronica appeared first. Betty noticed that the woman had finally ditched those high-heeled boots and her cape at some point, skittering through the ducts in her stockinged feet. Jellybean darted off, and Betty couldn’t wait for any of the others to catch up. It was more important to protect JB, even if it broke her heart.

  
The sound of a handgun firing told her that Toni was out of ammo with the last pulse rifle.

  
The duct ended above a ventilator fan, somehow still peacefully turning in the energy blackout. Jellybean gestured up to a ladder above it. 

  
“Up there!” she said excitedly. “There’s a shortcut across the roof!”

  
“Jughead,” called Betty. The man in question leapt out of the tunnel, and swung Jellybean across to where Betty waited for her at the bottom the ladder. Betty started to help Jellybean up the wide rungs, pushing her up towards Veronica, while Jughead guarded the entrance to the duct, waiting for the others.

  
The others were not coming.

  
An explosion shook the ducts, flame boiling out of the tunnel and throwing Jughead back. Betty screamed, tumbling to her feet and Jellybean lost her grip on the ladder, shrieking as she fell, and slid through the slats of the ventilator. 

  
“Jughead!” cried Betty helplessly, knowing she couldn’t get there fast enough. “Jughead, get her! Hurry!”

  
Jughead was already on his front, jamming the fan with his gun, and reaching through the gap to find Jellybean’s little hands, clutching at the edge of a vertical duct. Betty flung herself forwards next to him, her arms scrabbling for purchase on JB’s jacket.

  
“JB!” Jughead was pleading, his face drawn. “Come on, Jelly, you can hold on!”

  
Betty wriggled further into the gap, getting a slightly better grip on JB’s jacket. Jughead grasped the back of her jumpsuit, anchoring Betty firmly against him.

  
“I’m slipping!” screamed Jellybean. Her tiny face looked terrified, fear contorting her features in the dim light.

  
“I’ve got you!” gasped Betty. “I’ve-”

  
Jellybean let go, and Betty was left holding her own, empty, far-too-big jacket, watching as JB slid out of sight, her scream disappearing into the ducts far below them.

  
Jughead heaved Betty up out of the fan, brandishing his tracker at her.

  
“Come on!” he said. “We can find her with this!”

  
Veronica stared at them, still clinging to the ladder.

  
“You get to the dropship and tell them to wait for us!” yelled Betty. Even if this was hopeless – if they couldn’t find Jellybean – maybe Veronica would be willing to tell the truth about what happened at the Farm. 

  
Betty knew neither she nor Jughead were leaving the Farm alive without Jellybean.

  
“I really am sorry, B,” Veronica said abruptly. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

  
“Just go,” snapped Betty. “We’ll talk about this when we get out.”

  
Veronica nodded again sadly, and clambered out of sight.

Jughead kicked his way out of yet another air vent – _fucking complex, no wonder they couldn’t find JB_ – and jumped down, following the trace of the locator he’d given to Betty, and spied some hours later on Jellybean’s wrist. She had fallen a long way, but they’d been able to hear her little voice echoing up the duct.

  
God, god, couldn’t they go any faster down these stairs?

  
He didn’t know what had happened to Doiley and Toni, but there would be time to mourn for one of his oldest friends later. Right now, all he could think about was getting to Jellybean, who, despite all of her time here alone, was in greater danger now than she’d ever been alone. Some fucking commander he was. 

  
Betty was right alongside him, her breathing harsh and panicked. Her protective instinct to put the Serpent tracker on JB’s wrist had saved the girl, but he’d seen the devastation on Betty’s beautiful face when JB had fallen out of the jacket, and he knew Betty would die trying to rescue her. Well, fine, if they had to die here together, trying to rescue a little girl (rather than in, y’know, each other’s arms many years from now, as he’d dreamed), he was happy to risk it alongside her, for her and for Jellybean. 

  
They dropped into the lowest corridor of the Farm, and the tracker, thankfully, began to rise in pitch.

  
“She’s close,” said Jughead, and they picked up speed, until they could hear a voice calling their names faintly.

  
“Where are you?” called Betty, and a pair of tiny hands reached through the grating up to them. Clever thing, showing them where she was. Jughead would be oddly proud to die if it meant she could survive.

  
The pair of them dropped to their knees, Betty clutching at those reaching hands. Jughead hauled at the grating, but the colony structure was well built, and he couldn’t lift the panel.

  
“I’m going to have to cut it,” he gasped, and grabbed the cutting torch. _Toni had the other one, or Betty could’ve used it_. JB understood instantly, and dropped away from the grate to protect herself.   
Over Betty’s words of encouragement, Jughead began to hear the sound of the other tracker, letting them know that more of the creatures were heading their way.

  
“Jug,” said Betty, panicked. 

  
“I know!” he said.

  
“Hurry!”

  
“I know!” 

  
Goddammit, why was it taking so long? He cut through one strut, and another, and another, but they had to have room to get JB through without hurting her. Betty was pressed against the grating, almost whimpering with her fear for their tiny charge.

  
Something moved in the water behind Jellybean.

  
“JB!” called Betty, her voice thick with anguish. Jellybean screamed.

  
“I got it!” shouted Jughead, kicking through the grate, bashing furiously at the metal that stood in their way. Betty flung herself down, and called JB’s name helplessly. Below her, Jughead could only see choppy water, and Hot Dog. The stuffed toy floated, lonely, but Jellybean was nowhere to be seen.

  
“No,” said Betty dully.

  
“Let’s go,” said Jughead, wrenching her up through the hatch.

  
“No, no!” Betty started screaming, as he tried to wrestle her to her feet. “They don’t kill you! They don’t kill you, she’s alive-”

  
“I know, I believe you,” said Jughead, grasping her roughly by the shoulders and trying to haul her up. “She’s alive, but we’ve got to go!”

  
The tracker had not stopped beeping to alert them to incoming creatures. They still had the other tracker to find Jellybean. Staying here wouldn’t help anyone; the best thing they could do would be to head for the atmosphere processor.

  
Jughead didn’t have time to explain that he wasn’t abandoning Jellybean; instead, he just dragged Betty behind him, unwilling to risk her giving up in her despair. Betty seemed disoriented, lost in her horror and grief.

  
They should still be directly under the landing field. If they just headed straight up – if the lifts were still working in a power shutdown, the same way they had on the main building at Southside…

  
Jughead found the lift, and virtually threw Betty inside, before smacking the button for the surface, and spinning around to press his back against the wall.

  
The doors didn’t close. 

  
Jughead panicked, and hit the button for the door again, wondering if they were about to run out of luck. Slowly – _really? That slowly?_ – the door began to close.

  
There was a shriek, a gust of rancid breath, and the claws and jaw of one of the creatures smashed into the closing door. 

  
On reflex, Jughead lifted his rifle and fired.

The creature disappeared with a shriek, and the lift started to move. Jughead was screaming, his right arm burned by the acid. More was splattered on to his body armour, burning its way through.   
Betty leapt back into action – _not Jughead, not him too, please, please_ – grabbing at the clasps on his armour, desperately trying to free him from it before the acid could burn its way through to his skin.

  
“Get it off!” he pleaded, his voice weak.

  
“Jughead,” breathed Betty. “Come on, please!”

  
The armour dropped to the floor as the lift reached the surface, and the doors opened to the cold air of LV-426. Jughead was in agony, clutching his arm and the patch on his chest where some of the acid had made it through to his skin, and he seemed barely able to move, his right arm hanging limp when it wasn’t spasming with pain.

  
“Come on!” begged Betty, pulling his uninjured arm over her shoulder. “Jughead, please, come on, breathe for me, we’re so nearly there, please!”

  
They staggered out into the night, as the drop ship hoved slowly into view. Veronica was standing by Archie, but dashed over to help them as soon as she saw Betty and Jughead coming, heedless of her bare feet.

  
“How much time?” yelled Betty. “Veronica, his arm!”

  
“Plenty of time!” yelled Cheryl. “Twenty-six minutes!”

  
“We’re not leaving!” roared Betty, and hauled Jughead up into the dropship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jug and betty aren't going fucking anywhere without JB
> 
> i wrote this right when the spoilers for 4x17 came out, which is why it's aliens-heavy as fuck with very little riverdale canon.
> 
> fuck riverdale canon tho
> 
> ripley would never be such a fucking idiot as 4x17 betty because for SOME reason her scriptwriters didn't feel the need to destroy her entire fucking character in the name of genuinely shit drama
> 
> literally every time the overwhelmingly bad reviews came out i felt less sad and more energised
> 
> the patriarchy (as expressed by the writers' male heteronormative fantasies) can suck my metaphorical dick
> 
> what's that, this cheryl never fucking stalked a woman? and toni has a character beyond being 'romantically' gaslight by her white rich girlfriend?
> 
> even in this universe which is going to end up with a very stereotypical happy ending and choni isn't my main focus because i'm too put off by the profound creepiness of canon
> 
> that narrative can absolutely fuck off


	17. Up, Up and Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty enters the belly of the beast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whaddup, can you tell i rushed through this one because i wrote it right around 4x17 and i was angry as fuck
> 
> now i am salty but tranquil
> 
> like the sea on a calm day
> 
> or a bowl of peanuts

The dropship handled smoothly under Cheryl’s controls, although Cheryl was on the edge of a complete meltdown. Toni had hauled herself out of the duct, just in time for Veronica to help her up the ladder. Doiley, it seemed, had used his very last moments to shove her out of range of his grenade, although the acid had severely injured her lower limbs.

Jughead, too, was almost comatose from the pain of the acid, although his injuries were fairly self-contained and superficial by comparison to poor Toni. Archie was desperately trying to treat Toni’s injuries, and preserve as much of her lower legs as possible. Veronica was applying burns patches to Jughead.

Betty, meanwhile, was loading up with an almost embarrassing amount of weaponry. She’d taped a flamethrower to one of the fresh pulse rifles, and was currently loading up with as much ammunition as possible. As the very final, and most important thing, Betty taped the tracker that Jughead had given her to her gun, still beeping with JB’s signal.

In the cockpit, the atmosphere processor loomed, still venting coolant. Cheryl glared at it, and brought the dropship to a halt on one of the upper platforms, her arms shaking with the effort of holding herself together.

“Betty,” said Archie nervously.

“No,” interrupted Betty emphatically. “I don’t want to hear about it, okay? I’m going to get Jellybean, and that’s final.”

“You’ve got nineteen minutes.”

“Great,” replied Betty. “Jughead, don’t let these guys leave.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Jughead drowsily, accepting a painkiller from Veronica. Veronica met Betty’s eyes squarely, and Betty knew that Veronica would not let them leave without JB either. Perhaps the loss of his only child would give even Hiram Lodge pause. Perhaps Betty could forgive, if they got out of this alive.

“I’m coming,” said Cheryl abruptly. “If we aren’t leaving, you don’t need a pilot.” She grasped Toni’s hand, and kissed it again. Toni was in too much pain to do anything but grasp at her feebly, and nod her support. Cheryl hefted a pulse rifle, and stood alongside Betty.

“See you, Jughead,” said Betty brokenly, wishing that they’d had more time yet again. “When I get back, you can tell me your real name.”

“Forsythe,” gasped Jughead, rolling his eyes weakly. “It’s Forsythe Pendleton Jones. The Third.”

_“Forsythe,”_ repeated Betty blankly.

“When you get back, you can make fun of me,” offered Jughead. “Don’t be gone long.”

Betty darted away abruptly, unwilling to look at Veronica and know that the heiress had made the same connection she had.

She and Cheryl stood in the lift in silence. Cheryl was tense, and prepared to fight anything that she saw, like the professional that she was. Betty, on the other hand, could not stop turning it over in her mind.

JB – _Forsythia_ – lost an older brother, a long time ago. Jughead – _Forsythe_ – lost a baby sister around the same time. They hadn’t heard each other’s real names since landing at the Farm. It seemed like an impossible coincidence, and yet stranger things had happened. The times added up; their names and ages added up. She wasn’t just going to rescue Jellybean, the tiny survivor that she’d already adopted as a surrogate sister. Somehow, she was going to rescue the boy she’d fallen for’s baby sister.

Well, if that didn’t make this even worse.

The klaxons were echoing around the atmosphere processor, and the same placid ETHL voice that Betty remembered from the Riverdale was telling them how long they had to evacuate. Betty was suddenly taken back there, remembering her fear from that day, how much she’d wanted to survive. She supposed the stakes were even higher this time; but at least she wasn’t alone.

“I hope you’ve got some kind of plan, Sweet Betty,” said Cheryl, lighting her flamethrower calmly. “My TT and I are counting on it.”

“Get in,” said Betty. “Find JB. Get out.”

Cheryl scowled.

“I suppose it has the advantage of simplicity,” she said nastily, loading grenades into the pulse rifle. “I’ll haunt you in any afterlife if we die here. I hope you know that.”

Betty ignored her. The lift doors opened, to that familiar resin-covered sub-level. 

The tracker beeped rhythmically, telling them where to go.

The atmosphere processor was far too hot, and Betty felt faint, trying to ignore her nausea and the occasional bolts of electricity in the air. The tracker told her that Jellybean couldn’t be far; that they were in the right area, within fifty metres. The two young women hurried forwards. Betty tried not to think of a few hours earlier, when the Serpents and FP – _FP! Jellybean watched her own father die, how can I tell her?_ – had ventured in here, gung-ho and assured of their own success, only to meet death at the claws of the creatures.

Betty went first, releasing bursts of flame every few steps, to put off any creatures that might be lurking. Cheryl was behind her, keeping a wary eye out for anything following them, dropping flares to mark their path.

An arm reached out of the wall, and Betty gasped with fear.

“Cooper,” croaked a voice, and Betty realised that it was Nick St Clair, gooey and cocooned into the wall. His face no longer held that self-satisfied superiority. Instead, he looked sick and afraid, and

Betty’s heart lurched with sorrow, just a hint, even for him.

“Help me,” pleaded St Clair. “Oh God… it’s inside me!”

Betty was frozen, knowing there was no way to help him.

Cheryl stepped forward, with a face like thunder. Silently, she reached into her ammo belt, and handed St Clair one of her grenades, before walking on.

The tracker put them at zero metres from the wrist device. Casting around, Betty found it on the floor, sticky with the ooze that the creatures seem to produce.

Jughead gave it to her, and she gave it to Jellybean. Just like Betty’s jacket, it must have been two big for JB’s tiny wrist, and slipped off somewhere along the way. It had all been pointless, and she and Cheryl and the others up in the dropship were all about to die here for nothing. The air felt hot on Betty’s cheeks, and she felt completely unable to process anything but pain.

Betty pressed the Serpent wrist-watch to her chest, and sobbed.

“Cooper, we should go,” said Cheryl reluctantly. “We still have a few minutes-”

A tiny scream reached their ears. Betty and Cheryl both looked up, and dashed towards the source.

JB was screaming, cocooned, and watching one of the egg-creatures extend its spindly legs towards her. Betty leapt on to JB, shielding her, as Cheryl dispatched first the face-monster, and then an approaching Xenomorph, with calm precision, aiming her shots so that the acid blood missed Betty and Jellybean completely. 

Betty was already tearing Jellybean out of the cocoon, grateful that the resin had not yet hardened completely. Cheryl stood watch over them, swinging her pulse rifle from side to side anxiously. They still had ten minutes, even by the time JB was free.

The structure was beginning to collapse, flames bursting everywhere and shaking the place as the three of them tried to run through the complex. Jellybean clung to Betty, her small body trembling at

Betty hoisted her on to her waist and started to run with her, Cheryl just ahead of them, still releasing bursts of flame into the corridors ahead. They had the flares to guide their way, the lift to get them back up… Betty didn’t dare believe that they would make it.

They took a wrong turn, and stopped.

In one room of this level, a huge structure had been created. At one end, a kind of strange tube, not unlike the strange phallic thing on the face monsters, shuddered and squeezed, as one of the leathery eggs slithered on to the floor with a disgusting squelch. At the other end, was the biggest creature Betty had seen. Its claws were nearly twice as long as those of the others, and its shiny carapace dwarfed the room. Acid saliva dripped from its jaws.

_A queen, Sweet Pea had said, the mama. And she’s big, you know? Like, real big_.

Carefully, Betty let Jellybean slip from her side.

“Aim the flamethrower above the eggs, Cheryl,” she whispered. “Let this thing know what we could do in here.”

Cheryl obeyed, releasing a burst of flame. The creature – queen? – hissed furiously, but the smaller creatures that Betty had seen approaching retreated.

Slowly, painfully slowly, the three humans tried to retreat, inching back across the room.

Out of the corner of her eye, Betty saw an egg open.

“Fuck this!” said Cheryl, and fired. Betty was seconds behind her, unleashing the flamethrower on the rows of eggs.

The queen screamed, a noise that nearly deafened Betty, but she and Cheryl were relentless, firing bullets and grenades into the repulsive birthing chamber. 

Jellybean tugged at Betty’s sleeve, begging her to leave, and Betty remembered that surviving would be a much better revenge than just destroying the eggs a few minutes earlier than the core meltdown, anyway.

“Cheryl!” she said, picking JB up again. “Come on!”

The three of them pelted out of the room, towards the lift. A horrible cracking, wrenching noise reached Betty’s ears, and she hoped that it was just part of the structure disintegrating, and not something much worse.

The line of flares was still burning, and with four minutes to spare, they made it to the lift, which seemed to arrive, and to work, incredibly slowly. Betty collapsed on the floor as it began to move, with

JB beside her, still clinging on. Cheryl was on her feet, her flamethrower poised to take on any creature that appeared.

Something else was coming up in the other lift.

The dropship was gone.

“No,” said Betty brokenly, hugging Jellybean closer. “Veronica – Archie – they must’ve-”

“They made the right decision for them,” said Cheryl quietly. “We’ll have to accept that. I’m sure they tried.”

Betty would have been furious, if it didn’t seem like a waste of their last couple of minutes.

The other lift arrived. 

The queen’s hideous jaw appeared from the doors, her arms reaching for Betty, Cheryl and Jellybean. Cheryl hefted the pulse rifle uselessly.

“I won’t go down without a fight,” she snapped. “Bring it on, you ugly monstrosity.”

Betty dropped her own empty rifle, and cuddled Jellybean closer.

“Close your eyes, JB,” she whispered.

The atmosphere processor was now seriously aflame, and debris was beginning to fall everywhere. A piece landed near the queen, and impeded her slow progress, with that bulky frame, but she was nearly out of the lift. Betty closed her own eyes, and imagined she was home.

“Look!” squealed Jellybean.

The dropship rose up out of the flames, Archie at the helm. He lowered the steps, and Betty pushed Jellybean aboard.

“Cheryl!” she yelled, heaving herself up. Cheryl dropped her gun, and vaulted over, grabbing Betty’s outstretched hand. Betty hauled her aboard, and they scrambled up the steps.

“Archie, we’re aboard!” screamed Betty, and the ship lifted, lurching slightly as it caught on something. Betty strapped herself and Jellybean into a seat, Cheryl tumbling in next to them, and the ship cleared the atmosphere processor.

_Are we going to make it? Is there time?_

With an air-shattering boom that Betty remembered from the explosion of the _Riverdale_ , the ship yawed and shook in the air. For a moment, she thought again that it might shake itself to pieces, but the noise slowly ended, and then, impossibly, they were clear, rising towards the _Whyte Wyrm_ , still orbiting calmly in space. 

_One of them got aboard,_ Jughead thought _, and I can’t do anything about it_.

He woke up shortly after they landed on the _Whyte Wyrm_ , able to hear Archie, Betty, Cheryl, Veronica and Jellybean outside. Almost immediately afterwards, there was a lot of screeching, Archie choking, and the people who were still on their feet yelling. He and Toni were strapped down securely, presumably for their flight out, and he couldn’t seem to free himself to get out and help. If there was any way for him to help.

There was a distinct sound of hydraulics, a lot more screeching, and then silence.

Betty suddenly appeared in the cockpit, dashing over to him.

“I spaced that bitch!” she said joyfully. “Juggie, it’s over! They’re all dead! We’re going home!”

“You… what?” asked Jughead groggily.

“Oh, it doesn’t fucking matter anymore! We’re all going home!” Betty turned around, and beckoned JB over. JB looked incredibly nervous, and she was clinging to Betty, her eyes fixed on Jughead. “I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

“I’ve met Jellybean,” said Jughead. “JB, you don’t know how happy I am to know that you’re safe.”

“Me too,” whispered Jellybean.

“No,” said Betty delightedly. “No! Jughead Jones, you were never introduced properly, so I’d like you to say hello to Miss Forsythia Jones.”  
Forsythia.

No-one in their right mind would name a child that. Could it be a coincidence? Surely not. Looking at her features, Jughead thought perhaps he could trace a resemblance to hazy memories of his mom, his dad. Himself. 

“Forsythia?” he gasped.

“And Betty says your name is Forsythe,” said JB, her voice even smaller than normal. “Like my mom said my brother was called.”

“JB.” Jughead struggled with his safety straps, and Betty darted over to free him. “JB… I think I’m your brother.”

“I think you are too,” said Jellybean, her voice trembling.

Jughead fell from his seat, ignoring the burning pain in his arm, and wrapped his baby sister in a hug that he’d wanted for eight years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay! the jones siblings are reunited at long last! they're off! 
> 
> archie has 100% been ripped in half although i haven't mentioned it, although sadly that is aliens canon and not show canon
> 
> honestly im still mildly amused by how many of us are like 'archie cheating? tracks' but 'betty cheating? bullshit'. either way its wanky but it sure shows you how the show lionises archie and expects us to do the same but we all fuckin don't.
> 
> this betty is gonna be happy as fuck and the thought of infidelity will disgust her as it did in every single other episode


	18. It's All Over Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty is ready to GET IT ON
> 
> no really it's mainly poorly written sex because I have never written a smut before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apols if the sex sucks lol

Mutually, they decided that going into cryosleep for seventeen days would be pointless. The _Whyte Wyrm_ was equipped for a far larger crew, for potential weeks of combat, and they were more than equipped for five adults, a small girl and a synthetic person to survive during that time. 

Toni was in the worst condition, unable to leave medbay after the damage to her legs. As it was, she would never walk on her own feet again.

Luckily, Veronica had something to say about that.

“Lodge-Grande Corp has the very latest in bio-tech prosthetics,” she said. When Betty first met her, that would have been a proud, arrogant statement, full of unconscious superiority. Now, it was cowed, resentful, angry. “One of the first things I’ll do is make sure you get the best treatment on the planet. You won’t be able to tell the difference. Unless, of course, you’d like to be a little taller.”  
“My TT is perfect as she is,” Cheryl snapped, but her ire was tinged with gratitude. Toni clung to her girlfriend, still pale and fragile from the pain, but she gave Veronica a grin.

Veronica had gone through a major change. Betty had all but forgiven her, already, when she had saved Toni’s life, and risked her own to make sure that they stayed to rescue Cheryl, Betty and Jellybean, but Veronica was penitent, and furious at her own naiveté.

“Every time I think I’m doing the right thing, my father’s tricked me again,” she ranted. Betty and Archie listened in silent understanding. “Well, this time, it’s enough. I’m going to contact that lawyer – Mary – and we’re going to bring Hiram Lodge all the way down to the ground. I’ll see he pays for all those Farmies he sacrificed. And I’ll find the last Farmies and I’ll make sure Edgar Evernever’s bunch of sickos never get hold of a colony again. This is very far from over, guys, and I’ll need your help.”

“Anything, Ronnie,” said Archie reverently. Veronica shot him a shy grin, and reached for his hand. Betty wasn’t entirely sure what was going on there, but Veronica and Archie were slowly becoming inseparable, tied together by their experiences on LV-426. Gone were the feckless heiress and the servile android; in their places was a duo determined to do right by everyone that LGC had hurt, across the galaxy.

Jughead and Betty were no different.

Jughead had, quite understandably, spent his first few hours out of recovery glued to his sister’s side, asking all about her life, about their mother, about what she had seen in all the years they spent separated. JB was no less fascinated, and more than a little heartbroken by the loss of her father, only a few hours after she’d met him.

“I don’t think he had a chance to hear what her name was,” Jughead confided to Betty, one dark painful night. “I know he’d be okay with the fact that he died trying to make sure she could be safe. I have to believe that.”

Betty nodded, and drew him closer into her arms as he cried silently. She and Jughead and Jellybean were virtually inseparable now, JB adopting her as a new surrogate aunt or sister.

Jughead had not adopted her as a sister.

Not at all.

It was late, the first day after they set off from LV-426. Archie was undergoing repairs from the alien queen’s attack, but he’d given them enough information to search the ship for any contamination from the creatures. Betty, Cheryl and Veronica had searched the ship from stem to stern, leaving JB safely in Jughead’s care in med-bay. 

Sure enough, that bitch creature had left a couple of eggs aboard for them as a treat. They spaced them, sending them out into the cold of space with their mother, but the risk of a second nest hidden somewhere had contributed to their decision to stay awake for the voyage home.

Betty was exhausted, hovering somewhere between elated that they were all escaping, and devastated by how few of them had made it out. She headed towards the little room she’d been assigned when they left Earth, and paused outside.

“The commander’s bunk is bigger,” said Jughead’s voice, “but it feels ghoulish for me to sleep in a dead man’s bunk.”

Betty looked up at him. He was lounging by the door to the officer’s quarters, still looking battered from his time on the Farm, but whole, healthy, and alive. He was shirtless still, the remnants of his wounds hidden under thick bandages.

And hers.

“My bunk is nearly as big,” she heard herself saying. “Perhaps they’re all like it.”

Jughead opened one of the unassigned cabins, and stepped in.

“This’ll suit me,” he said, glancing nervously at her. “You think?”

Betty walked in, and surveyed the room. The bed did look just as big as hers, and terribly comfy. Cheryl and Veronica were taking the first watch, and Jellybean was safely tucked in a bunk near the the women.

“Seems nice,” she said hesitantly, and turned as if to leave. A gentle hand placed itself on her shoulder.

“Stay,” said Jughead, longing clear in his voice. “Stay with me?”

Betty reached up to him, and kissed him.

  
At first, he thought they might just kiss, just hold each other the way they had on the Farm, sitting up on the bed, but Betty started to whimper, and she swung a leg over his, settling on to his lap. She was wearing less than before, and almost without him telling them to, his hands slid up her shirt, finding soft flesh and smooth skin that gave perfectly under his fingertips.

“Should I take my top off?” whispered Betty, her mouth alongside his ear as he bit at her neck.

“…yeah, yes,” he replied incoherently, and she pulled back to yank at her waistband. 

_I should help her_ , he thought stupidly, and grabbed at her top, almost ripping it in his clumsiness. Not kissing her for more than a few seconds was painful to him, and he reached for her again, pulling her in for another kiss. She giggled into his mouth – _what a feeling, this is so much less frightening that I thought it might be_ – and reached behind her to undo her bra, before slipping the straps down her shoulders, and then, implausibly, the girl he was in love with was topless on his lap.

  
_Oh_ , thought Betty, as Jughead pushed her over, settled his hips into the cradle of hers, and mouthed voraciously at her breasts, _that’s what it feels like_.

There were so many sensations at once – her hands carding through his newly clean hair, his hands all over her, his mouth pulling at one of her nipples – but the most striking was the sharp pleasure of him grinding his erection into her, tightening her skin and taking her breath away. It wasn’t the same as touching herself, and she was quite sure that she wouldn’t come from that alone, but the sensation of someone else touching her there, and the thought that he was turned on by her - so turned on his breaths sounded desperate - was exhilarating, and she felt more turned on in response.

“Betty, Betty, I have to stop!” pleaded Jughead suddenly. Betty snapped her head up. _It isn’t fair, we have time now, why does he want to stop? It was feeling good – so good – did I do something wrong? Am I not sexy enough? How can one be more sexy?_

“What is it?” she asked, trying not to sound disconsolate.

“I…” Jughead blushed terribly. “I haven’t done this before, and I want you so much, I don’t want it to be… but I’m scared it’s going to be over too quickly.”

Betty blinked, and then understood what he meant. 

I guess that’s complimentary.

“Do it,” she whispered. “Come now, and then you… maybe it’ll be easier later? If you’re less… uh, inaugural?”

Jughead stared at her.

“I love you,” he said miserably. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted, and I’m ruining it.”

That wouldn’t do.

Betty sat up, and yanked at his trousers.

“Betty, what-”

She pulled his cock out, and wrapped her hand around it. Jughead shuddered, and pressed his mouth against her neck.

Although she knew the logistics of sex, the idea of him inside her seemed… well, a little intimidating, but she was fascinated already, her hand smoothing up and down his cock, rubbing her thumb over the head, easing her path with the fluid that glistened there. Jughead was swallowing painfully, his eyes flickering between her face, her breasts and her hand.

God, Betty was even more turned on now.

“Get these off,” said Jughead suddenly, pulling at her trousers. 

“Yeah,” gasped Betty, “yeah, both ‘f us, now.”

When they were both completely bare, Betty lay back down on the bed, and pulled Jughead back on top of her, reaching again for his cock. He was grinding against her, panting, his eyes fixed on her mouth.

“Do it,” she said softly. “We have forever now, baby. I love you.”

Jughead groaned, and came.

  
This was the worst and best moment of his life. He’d just got off with a partner for the first time ever, which was insanely great, but it had been humiliatingly quick, and he’d spent all over her thighs and stomach. Betty didn’t seem to mind, pulling him down into another kiss, heedless of his cum smearing all over both of them. Jughead was still gasping, his head spinning from the sensation of his orgasm, and the temptation to sink into Betty’s soft body and fall asleep was strong.

Fuck that, though.

His hands had a mind of their own, apparently. His left hand cupped the back of Betty’s neck, drawing her even closer, as the other trailed down her body, to the heat he could feel between her legs. Betty hissed as he stroked her there gently, feeling the wetness there.

That was good, right?

“Tell me what you like,” he whispered. “I want to make you feel good, Betty, I want to make you feel so good. I want you to feel like I did.”

Betty clasped one hand around his, and directed his fingers up, up, till he found a spot that made her breath hitch, and her fingers tighten around his hand.

“There, there,” she said breathlessly. “…I… there, please. Just… just a little harder.”

He’d follow her instructions to the end of the world.

“Can I…” he swallowed. “Is this good?”

“S’good, baby.”

“Do you want me to… can I…?”

“Inside me, try it, I want to feel it.”

Gently, still using his thumb to rub at her clitoris, he reached down, and slid a finger inside her.

“Does it feel good?”

“It feels… I don’t know, let me just… can you move it?”

He started to move his hand, toying with the idea of another finger, remembering stuff he’d read about this on the off-chance that he ever felt strongly enough about someone to try it. Betty’s breathing hitched again, and she closed her eyes. Their faces were so close to one another he could feel her lashes blink against his cheek.

“There, there, can you… more?”

He crooked another finger inside her, feeling how tight it was, wondering how on earth sex was going to work. His cock tingled at the thought, and he thought perhaps he might not be that disappointing after all. He added another finger, driven almost crazy by the warmth of her.

Betty was flushed and sweaty underneath him, her little breaths getting more frequent, and higher in pitch.

“Jug…” she gasped. “Jughead!”

Her eyes screwed closed, and that beautiful mouth pouted into a grimace, and she shook for a moment, before exhaling loudly, and relaxing completely.

_I made her come_ , thought Jughead, astonished. 

  
Betty’s muscles felt liquid, drenched in pleasure, and she opened her eyes to see Jughead staring down at her in wonder. She reached up, and stroked his face.

“I thought I must be the unluckiest person in the universe,” she said drowsily. “I guess I deserved to find something good at long last.”

Jughead smiled shyly at her post-orgasm philosophising, and then something seemed to strike him.

“What?” said Betty, worried that he was having some last minute attack of confidence or doubt. “What?”

“I have to have a taste.”

Jughead gave her a nervous grin, and started to mouth down her sternum, his lips sliding lower with each kiss. 

_I guess his fondness for eating extends beyond the mess hall,_ she thought, delirious.

With a sudden burst of action, Jughead yanked on her hips, and buried his face between her legs. Betty gasped at the sensation, and her hands scrabbled for purchase, eventually ending with one cupped around the back of Jughead’s neck, and the other pinching at her nipple. She was a little sensitive still, but Jughead’s mouth was gentle on her, just exploring, tasting. Betty thought of exchanging the favour, and squirmed pleasurably. 

Maybe she could suck his cock next.

The thought of performing oral sex on a man had always seemed unappealing to her, but now she’d touched Jughead, the idea fascinated her, and her core muscles squeezed again. A lovely aftershock shuddered up her spine.

Jughead only seemed to get keener, paying more and more attention to her clitoris with that perfect mouth. Betty moaned, and clapped a hand over her mouth in embarrassment. One of Jughead’s hands squeezed at her thigh in response, and he pushed his tongue inside her. Some detached part of Betty’s brain almost produced a bitchy Alice to damn her for enjoying the sensation, but then Jughead looked up, grinned shyly at her again, and all of her phantom Alices disappeared.

“Juggie,” gasped Betty. “Juggie, come here.”

His hand was down between his legs, rubbing hungrily at his renewed erection. Betty thought of having it inside her, after his fingers and his tongue, and swallowed. Jughead crawled up her body, stopping only to bite gently at her nipple.

“Can we?” he pleaded. “I’ve had my contra-shot, there’s no risk of pregnancy. And I’m clean, baby, I’ve been checked, I’ve never slept- I’ve never wanted to-”

“God, me neither, please, please,” said Betty, pushing Jughead over into a sitting position. She settled into his lap, legs momentarily clumsy. His cock was rubbing against her core, soaking in her wetness, and she winced at the pleasure. Taking hold of him, she bit her lip, and began to lower herself.

The sensation took her breath away.

It wasn’t pleasure, exactly; in fact, it was almost uncomfortable, although she was so turned on from their foreplay that it didn’t feel bad. Either way, it was a far cry from the agony that Alice had tried to assure her of. 

Betty lowered herself a little further. Her hips came to rest against his, and she sighed with the feeling.

Jughead’s eyes were screwed shut.

“Does it feel good?” whispered Betty, her breath coming in little shocky gasps.

“So good,” replied Jughead. “I can’t look at you. I’ll come again.”

Betty stayed still for a moment, her stomach muscles fluttering with the new feeling of him inside her. Soon, her body seemed to ache with the need to move.

“Juggie, Juggie… can I move?”

Jughead groaned, and wrapped his arms around her hips, opening his eyes to rub his nose against hers. Betty moved her hips tentatively, and gasped with the improvement in sensation, before slowly building up a rhythm. Jughead thrust up against her, shocking into a delicious spike of pleasure.

“Oh!”

“No, no, did I hurt you?”

“It feels good, Jug, I just… Oh, there, it feels good!”

“Betty- Betty, I-”

He kissed her, sloppily, tongue tangling with hers, before pulling away to bite at her neck. 

It felt a bit better; then it felt a _lot_ better. Jughead slid his hand down between them to rub gently at her clit, and she whimpered. They moved like that for moments, minutes, maybe hours. Betty couldn’t keep track, just feeling the tightening of her body as he moved inside her.

“Oh,” she said again. “Yes, yes, Jughead, I..”

“Does it feel good, baby? Am I hurting you, do you need anything?”

His voice sounded strained, and she could see pleasure suffusing his features. She wanted to see that again.

“Juggie,” she said urgently. “Let go. I want you to come.”

“But you-”

“I’m not going to come from this this time, okay? That’s not you, I – oh! – there will be so many more times, now, we’ve earned them. I just want to see you come.”

Jughead moaned again, and rolled them over, thrusting urgently into her. This felt different – the angles were changed, Betty couldn’t tell if she liked it or disliked it or if it was just a different flavour of the same thing – and Jughead lost it, gasping and grinding with the pleasure of it, before he came with a moan.

He collapsed on top of her, heavy and hot, before he grasped her waist and rolled again so she was splayed on top of him, supported by his body. It left Betty with a strange sense of emptiness, so she pressed herself closer to him, avoiding the acid scarring on his right arm. She felt like it was a gift, to be close to someone – to share this with someone – after all her lonely years aboard the _Riverdale_ and the decades adrift in space.

“Betty,” Jughead gasped, when he had his breath back. “Jesus Christ, Betty, I want to do that every fucking day from now on.”

“We can,” whispered Betty, rubbing her nose against him. “We have time now.”

They were silent for a moment, before Jughead shook his head clear of the fog.

“This isn’t fair,” he said.

“What isn’t fair, Jug?”

His hand trailed up the back of her sticky thighs, aiming again for between her legs. Betty shuddered as he pushed his fingers inside her, and started to rub again at her clit.

“I owe you more than a few orgasms,” he said. “I think I’d like to improve my score a little, don’t you think? Practice makes perfect.”

Betty whimpered, and stretched her hands either side of his head, kissing him soundly. God, she loved him.

They had a long eight hours before it was their watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> imagine toni and veronica with a 'congrats on the sex' cake for their friends
> 
> i uploaded this to the wrong fic for like a minute, how embarrassing. three episodes into season two and suddenly they're ignoring the black hood and fucking on a spaceship
> 
> or is that in archie vs predator


	19. An Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After it all ends, they have to find a way to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hey in this fic archie is a decent artificial person who would never take advantage of a deluded betty or gleefully cheat on veronica or propose they fuck on the sly.
> 
> betty is still traumatised but won't be taking that out on her fucking boyfriend and best friend for no reason.

On her twenty-seventh birthday, Betty turned ninety-four.

It had been a long ten years. When they arrived on Earth, they were met with even more suspicion and distrust than Betty had been when she first woke up from the _Register._ Luckily, this time, there was more than just her; Cheryl and Veronica were both rich, beautiful and famous, and they backed her up completely, adding their own supporting evidence to Betty’s original story. Even if they were in some conspiracy to bring down Hiram Lodge and take over for themselves, the assured corroborations from two elite Serpents, and the incorruptible Archie, spoke for themselves.

The first thing to do, once they’d been discharged from quarantine with the assurance that no horrific passenger had joined them aboard the _Whyte Wyrm_ , nestled safely in an egg or curled around someone’s sternum, was to care for Jellybean, and make sure that Toni got the medical help she needed. Betty and Veronica had contacted Mary Andrews, the sympathetic lawyer from Betty’s first tribunal, and she had in turn put them straight on to the best family lawyer that money could buy. DNA evidence was nothing; Jughead wanted to make sure that there was no way LGC could try to take his baby sister away from him.

Veronica was as good as her word, and Toni was soon equipped with bio-prosthetics that showed none of the damage that the acid blood had done to her legs.

“Sometimes I can still feel it,” she admitted sadly, clutching Cheryl’s hand. Cheryl looked furious, and had just come from yet another meeting with her family’s lawyers, trying to draw her back into the fold for her new, notorious ethical stance. “But most days I don’t even remember that they aren’t my original legs.”

“They’re beautiful,” snapped Cheryl. “Because they’re yours.”

These first few steps to finding their feet back on Earth went off without a hitch. It was everything that came after that was difficult.

Veronica, it seemed, was done with her family. After the months of tribunals, the questioning about Doiley, about FP, and finally, the admission that Nick St Clair had been as guilty as sin, the heiress had decided to fight her father as far as she could, and try to bring him to justice.

“They’re calling it a witch hunt!” she said furiously once, in one of the early years of proceedings. “They think I’m just trying to being my dad down to gain ownership of his corporation. God forbid that a member of my family should develop a fucking conscience!”

“You’re doing the right thing, V,” Betty had said gently. “One day, everyone else will know the truth, and they’ll see why you’re doing it.”

  
The immediate reaction was disbelief; once the colonial authorities and LGC realised they weren’t going to get the crew of the _Whyte Wyrm_ to change their stories, they changed tack, and started trying to bribe them. Jughead, Cheryl and Toni had all been honourably discharged from service, with full pensions and the right to live on Earth. Jughead thought they were trying to buy them off.

“I can’t do it, Betty,” he admitted, late one night, when they were wrapped around one another, agreeably sweaty and post-coital. “It would be no future for JB, always knowing that they might try to do that again, that the same thing could happen to any other colony kids when LGC finds some other deadly resource they want to exploit. We can’t accept that money. We have to keep fighting.”

Betty nuzzled the striking slope of his nose.

“You’re preaching to the choir, baby,” she said, amused and entranced by his openness with her. There were no secrets between them; Jughead could probably have drawn a map of the _Riverdale_ from memory, and… well, it was probably lucky neither of them had ever _really_ met the other’s parents. It would have been a disaster, even if years later, now Betty and Jughead had functionally raised Jellybean to adulthood, Betty thought she could understand Alice a little better. Not enough that she wanted to use Alice as an example, but she understood the fears and insecurities that led Alice to behave the way that she did.

  
So they decided, unanimously, that they were going to bring LGC and Veronica’s father to his knees; three former marines, an heiress, the oldest seventeen-year-old in history, an artificial person and a small child. Jughead and Betty’s fears were worst for JB, seeing that the case might eat even more years of her childhood, but JB had always been brave, and now that she felt safe, loved and secure, she was almost bloodthirsty in her desire to stop the people who’d destroyed her world.

Their first advantage came from an unexpected source.

Mary had been able to track down Evelyn, the strange young woman who had so carefully wormed doubts about Betty’s mental state into the tribunal. It seemed that, since the Farm had gone dark, Evelyn _Evernever_ had gone rogue, screaming about her (father? Husband??!)’s mistreatment at the hands of LGC. She’d been a deliberate plant of Hiram’s, an exchange of power between the Farm and the Corporation, so Hiram could place the blame on Betty for the destruction of the _Riverdale,_ and Edgar Evernever could carry on building his better world on LV-426 without interruption.

When it had all gone wrong for Edgar, and the proof started to emerge, Mary had ‘accidentally’ leaked the truth of the Farm’s destruction to Evelyn, and she and some other fanatics had started a very loud and public campaign to have an inquiry into how the disaster had been allowed to take place. Betty’s conscience squirmed at the thought of allying themselves with people as deluded and unpleasant as the Earth Farmies; still, some of them had lost family out there, and they deserved answers and justice just as much as Betty and Jughead’s own families did.

They had hoped it would be a deluge of revelations after that, but it took years of campaigning, years of fighting injunctions and court cases to get their stories told, to get the right people asking the right questions. It dragged on for years, in the end, a long and wearying fight.

Several times, Betty thought they should give up for the sake of the future that they were shakily building on-planet; Jughead was writing, books about crime and life and poverty out on the colonies that sold absurdly well; she was slowly building a reputation as a journalist, putting out stories about industrial corruption, as well as her personal reflections on what life had been like, nearly a century ago. Jellybean was flourishing at school, and Veronica, Toni and Cheryl had gone into some kind of business together, which was all rather mysterious and seemed to rake in tonnes of cash. 

Veronica loved her father, and she often struggled to face the reality of his actions at the helm of LGC; but she remembered Nick St Clair, and two broken specimen tubes which would have infected and killed Betty and JB. Every time she was tempted to rejoin the family, she steeled herself harder, and remembered what she was fighting for. If there was anyone who could understand being torn between love for a father, and hatred for what became of him, it was Betty, and it bonded the two of them even closer together.

The fight was taking a lot out of everyone.

Finally, finally, years later, it all came out, and it was over.

Hiram Lodge had organised the whole thing, with Nick St Clair as an all-too willing aide. He had deliberately had Betty sent back out to the Farm, hoping that she might die out there, and cease to be a thorn in his side. 

He hadn’t anticipated Veronica going, and that was the only thing he truly regretted.

Apart from that, he was almost gleeful when the time came for him to confess before the colonial authorities, and the press of numerous planets and colonies. Yes, he sent the Serpents out there to get a sample; yes, he hadn’t cared particularly if there were high fatalities; no, he thought the investment would have been worth it, if they’d been able to bring a sample back for one of their research groups. Yes, he authorised the exploration of the alien ship, ensuring that the Farm wrought its own destruction.

Yes, his grandfather had given orders that led to Hal Cooper going mad, and destroying his family. Consistency in policy was often advantageous.

No, he wouldn’t have regretted it if either mission had succeeded. He only regretted that LV-426 had been destroyed, ensuring that no sample of xenobiology would be returning to Earth.

Betty was seeing the same therapist that she had seen before the mission to LV-426. She thought they had a good rapport, and even before she was proven not to be delusional, the therapist had helped her think through all of the dreadful things that had happened aboard the Riverdale.

“I wake up, sometimes, thinking we haven’t left,” Betty admitted, not for the first time, “but the fear is different, now. I’m so scared of things growing inside me; I woke up so many times, thinking there was one bursting from my chest, in the first few years after it ended.”

“I think that’s very understandable,” said the therapist sympathetically.

“I haven’t dreamt it in years,” said Betty nervously. “Do you… Do you think it will still affect me? Do you think that I’ll let fear, and resentment, grow inside me with it? Jellybean asked me about it once. I’m scared I won’t be able to cope.”

“Betty,” said the therapist. “What do you think?”

Betty frowned, and pressed her hand against her head.

“Maybe I’m complacent, now, after so long,” she said, “but it feels like I’m going to be okay.”

  
Jughead met her outside the therapist’s building, his long arms pulling her into a hug. He had his ups and downs, too; there had been a frightening time when he was refusing to get therapy for his own trauma, feeling like he would be letting Betty and Jellybean down if he admitted weakness, if he admitted that he wasn’t the big bad Serpent Prince who could protect them against the monsters. He’d helped Betty fight her monsters, out there in the dark, and then Betty had helped him fight his own monsters, in his head, in dark nights where he woke up, tumbled from their bed, convinced that they’d left his girl and his sister behind on LV-426, or that they hadn’t really killed them all.

He had his own therapist, after that, after Betty fought with him fearsomely, refusing to let him sacrifice his own mental health to those demons. He saw him regularly, still, and he’d once broken down, unable to express his relief that Betty hadn’t given up on him when he was self-destructing.

They all needed help after the Farm. No-one had come out of it without trauma, without scars both physical and mental.

Today was Betty’s twenty-seventh birthday, and her ninety-fourth.

“We’re meeting them all at the house,” said Jughead, looping his arm around her waist where it always sat comfortably. “JB’s bringing her latest conquest, Cheryl and Toni are coming later, and Veronica and Archie will already be there. Veronica thinks it’s a surprise, but I know I won’t find an excuse to get you there without you screwing it out of me.”

“Screwing it out of you?” said Betty. “You want to rephrase that, baby?”

“Not really,” responded Jughead smugly. “After last night-”

“Ooft, we’re in public, Juggie.”

“No-one’s listening.”

“Still.”

There was a brief companionable silence, as Betty thought of heading back to the house where they’d made their new lives. Caramel still slunk around the place, now an ancient and beloved deaf thing, all bones under her fur, but still adoring and cuddly, and able to admit staggeringly loud purrs for a feline of her advanced age. Hot Dog, her accomplice, had grown from a floppy-pawed sheepdog puppy to a great woolly thing that lolloped from place to place and kept Jellybean delighted in some of her darkest moments.

It was the house where Jellybean had grown up into a far-cooler-than-them adolescent, and now a newly-minted adult, who’d be leaving them soon, for her own new life.

New life.

Betty was scared. One time, ten years ago, JB had asked her if the aliens grew inside you the way that babies grew inside people, and when Betty had once thought she might be pregnant, a few years ago, that image had stayed with her.

Betty was scared that she might grow to resent a baby, that she would wake up to dreams of it tearing out of her, or it being torn from her arms for an experiment.

Now, as she stroked her abdomen gently, she felt nothing but love for the new little bundle of cells that had blossomed from her love for Jughead.

Jughead had stopped, always aware of her moods without her needing to tell him.

“What is it, baby? Are you annoyed I ruined your surprise?”

“Oh,” she said, stroking his face, so very dear to her. “No, Jug, no. I have a surprise for you, actually.”

She pressed his hand against her stomach, feeling the long fingers, and the wide palm, that covered so much of her waist.

Jughead was speechless, his mouth open dumbly as if he could hardly cope.

“You…” he said breathlessly. “We? Already? We’re…

“We’re going to have a baby, Jughead,” Betty whispered.

Jughead sniffed, and yanked her in for a kiss.

“I love you,” he gasped, caressing her face, her neck, her ears, her stomach again. 

“I love you.” Betty held him closer. “I love you, I love you.”

  
Later, at Betty’s party, they were both abstaining from drinking, she out of practicality, he from solidarity. Their guests, and even JB, were not following suit.

“Business is good,” Veronica was saying, her arm possessively around Archie’s. There had been some controversy over that, when they fell in love, that a human and a synthetic could not possibly fall in love. But Veronica had never forgotten that Archie was a person, however artificial, and she loved him for himself, even if his self had been a quirk of programming, rather than a quirk of DNA. It was the same thing, surely, if articulated differently. And anyone who saw them together would struggle to question their love and dedication to one another. Betty phased out slightly, seeing Cheryl and Toni questioning Jellybean’s current young man about his plans for the future. For a child who’d lost her parents at eight, JB could hardly have been raised with more determined aunts, who would defend her forever.

JB had grown into such a wonderful person. Betty wondered if she hadn’t found Jellybean when she did, would she have survived? Would she and Jughead have died together on the Farm, their tragic love never articulated, their future lost almost as soon as they dared to dream of one?

Betty’s hand moved unconsciously to cradle her stomach again.

“You know,” said her favourite voice, “as well as having the longest cryo-sleep on record, you’ll probably be the oldest mother ever on record.”

Jughead wrapped his arms around hers, over her stomach, and pressed a kiss against the back of her neck.

“Do you think it’s silly?” asked Betty. “To want a happy ending like this? To want to see our friends and our families with a good future, with the promise of happiness? After we went through so much?”

“Not really,” said Jughead. “I think it’s only fair. It’s our turn to do better than our parents.”

Betty thought of what they might tell this baby about its grandparents; how one father went mad, and destroyed his family; how that man’s wife loved with fear, how her sweet parental gestures rubbed like sandpaper on her children’s unprotected skin. She thought of its other grandparents, both of whom abandoned their children in the end, more interested in themselves than the lives they had inflicted existence on.

She and Jughead would not end up like that.

They had lost too much already to sacrifice happiness for drama.

“I love you,” she said again. Jughead mumbled incoherently, but happy tears soaked her hair from where he was pressed against her.

The dark and the cold could stay out in space. It had no place here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so angry now that I made archie good. I never liked him but I've always been like 'don't trash him in fics just because he's boring'. turns out he's a massive prick. veronica deserved better. betty was out of character but at least she approached the situation with something resembling a fucking conscience. archie's a piece of shit and the writers seem to want us to like him. newsflash: he's the least popular character for a reason and now everyone hates him even more!!!!!!
> 
> lol
> 
> anyway this was a labour of love, and while none of yall liked it as much as the more canon-y stuff, I originally had a blast writing it. hope all three of you that read to the end had a chuckle.
> 
> the riverdale writers are incompetents who can enjoy their tanked views and ratings for writing the laziest, shittiest plotline they've ever attempted.


End file.
